When animal rights activists petition and complain and wave signs around, that’s fine, they are within their rights. When they start firebombing researchers cars and homes, putting children at risk and damaging property, they have become nothing but terrorists and criminals.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Holy Eco-terrorists, batman!
I’m an “animal rights” person and I completly agree with you. There is no place at all for violence and terror tactics.
Notice how they never bother the Soylent Green production plants?
Does this remind anyone else of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back? Anyone?
Such acts are more about the perpetrator gaining notoriety in their very limited and extremist social circles than about truly working to bring about change in animal research practice.
It’s disgusting, selfish, behavior that does neither the cause for animal rights nor the research community any good.
Maybe you can sneak into one of there meetings and have them give you a kitten.
Dervin wins already. But I can hardly wait for the pack of strained analogies sure to follow in the comments, as soon as my former co-religionists and their enablers figure out how to post a comment miraculously right after they type it only in another time zone.
Dervin wins already. But I can hardly wait for the pack of strained analogies sure to follow in the comments, as soon as my former co-religionists and their enablers figure out how to post a comment miraculously right after they type it only in another time zone.
This is disgusting, and very scary. I work with mice for brain research too, and I can’t imagine having something like this happen and to have to live with this fear. How do these people not get that, a) us working with animals has done so much to improve their life and the lives of their loved ones, and b) that people are animals too, so you are being unbelievably hippocritical (among many other things) by trying to injure and even kill human beings who work with animals.
And for crying out loud, have they ever even toured through an animal research facility? My mice at least have a pretty good life and are treated like any old pet one would have at home. Pathetic people.
Sadly, this is my alma mater.
As much as I loved living in Santa Cruz, and as much as I still love the whole Monterey Bay area, I have to say that this doesn’t surprise me. Don’t get me wrong, most people wouldn’t do this, but I think in Santa Cruz, a higher percentage of people would than in, say, LA.
At least we’re not threatening to blow up cracker factories.
Does anyone remember the case last year where the Slavic evangelical Christians in Sacramento beat a gay man to death? Verdict from the trial of one of them was announced on Friday. 150 days. For being an accessory to murder.
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1127797.html
@9, considering some of the propaganda posters these people post around campus (I’m at UCSC), they’re quite comfortable either lying about or remaining ignorant of how you treat your animals. And in doing so they’re influencing impressionable young students to do terrible things, possibly like this. The people that arrive on campus to start protests and such are not students, but they’re sure happy to get students to do the dirty work for them.
Thats what they do over here as well, it’s a pretty organized thing worldwide. They don’t get nearly enough attention from law enforcement.
Gah, way to give the cause of animal protection a bad name, losers. You’d think if they were gonna be violent terrorists and destroy their credibility and endanger people and everything they’d at least go after the worst offenders first (like factory farms) instead of picking on fruit fly researchers (for fuck’s sake). Goes to show exactly how deranged people can get when they abandon evidence as the primary criterion for belief-formation, I guess.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think there are a lot of things about the way our species tends to treat other species that are in serious need of correction, including some of the currently accepted uses of animals in scientific research. But trying to kill people is not the right way to fix this.
———*mdash;
By the way, PZ, this blog (along with the rest of ScienceBlogs) is displaying very oddly for me in Firefox 3 under Linux just now. The page layout seems to be malfunctioning badly. But perhaps it’s just me.
“Fliers identifying 13 UCSC scientists, some of whom use mice, fruit flies and other nonprimate creatures in their research, were discovered at a downtown coffee shop Tuesday. The fliers say, “Animal abusers everywhere beware; we know where you live; we know where you work; we will never back down until you end your abuse.” The names, home addresses, home phone numbers and photos of researchers were published on the fliers.”
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_10080054
Threatening violence over Drosophila experiments?
hey you EVILutionists only have yourselves to blame. EVILution teaches that humans are just another animal, so animal rights terrorists are caused by teaching EVILution.
EVILution also teaches that whites are superior to blacks, so you can thank it for racism too!
and ice cream headaches. stupid EVILutionists!
Tolerating the irrational but moderate religionists provides cover for the extremists in that movement.
Does similar tolerance of irrational but moderate animal-rights activists provide cover for their extremists?
Maybe we are approaching security for ‘animal research’ the wrong way. Currently huge efforts are made to keep it low-key and out of the public eye… which clearly isn’t helping in showing just how utterly nuts the vast majority of anti-animal research people are. Maybe we’d be better off with more openness.
Anyway, using animal subjects for research at UC (and I think pretty much any other university) involves a mountain of paperwork, reviews, and all sorts of anti-cruelty measures. Just one little item, you have to demonstrate that the number of animals involved is the smallest you can make it while still getting reliable results. Also, if there are tissue culture or other methods not involving animals, you have to show that those will not work.
And then there are little things like the campus vet, and the signs up in every lab saying that anything that even looks questionable from a cruelty POV must be reported. Oh, and animal cruelty (or neglect) is one of those things where tenure does not protect you at all.
The public generally just does not seem to get how careful the vast majority of researchers are to avoid unnecessary cruelty, and how carefully the questions are considered.
PS: Animal rights activists protesting at UCLA always seem to end up picketing the wrong buildings. Somehow they don’t seem to understand what the word ‘vivarium’ means… which is all good for me.
Threatening violence over Drosophila experiments? -imsd007
That’s some serious crazy.
Totally OT, but is there anyone else here who DOESN’T get ice cream headaches?
And for crying out loud, have they ever even toured through an animal research facility?
funny story…
back when I was a grad student at Berzerkeley, several animal rights groups used to have (still do?) a yearly protest march through the campus to protest all animal research.
one year, they blocked access to my lab for the whole day, and I actually lost one of my experiments because I couldn’t access it (yes, they caused fish death!).
in the interim, the powers that be had decided to gut the life sciences building and completely redo it from the ground up; just leaving the external frame and facade.
they put a fence up around the building to protect people from wandering the construction site and getting hit by falling debris, etc.
well, the next time the “rightists” did their protest march, I pretended to be an “insider” and told them that all the really nasty animal experiments were going on in the (now completely gutted) life sciences building.
They marched around an empty building for the rest of the day.
I received many offers of free beer from faculty and students alike for that one.
…
One thing I will say, is that while essentially ALL of the concerns of these protesters were based on complete fictions, and the damage they have caused in the past is very real, there was a minor upside to it all. In the formation of the research review protocols in response to the complaints of these people, many researchers became better aware of good animal husbandry practices. Not sure it’s worth the yearly hassle of having to submit 11 page protocols to the “committee”, but at least there was something positive to come out of it.
At this point, I’m pretty sure that all the UC’s have strict animal research protocols in place, either modeled on Berkeley’s or something similar.
people protesting the treatment of animals in research facilities in the UC system indeed have not toured these facilities. Not that it probably would make any difference how well the animals were treated to them anyway.
Does similar tolerance of irrational but moderate animal-rights activists provide cover for their extremists?
i think you would first have to show that moderate support for animal rights was irrational. moderate theism is just as irrational as extremist theism. but is moderate advocacy for animal rights irrational? i dont think the word “irrational” even applies – its a subjective opinion about how animals should be treated, not an objective claim about how the universe operates.
its a subjective opinion about how animals should be treated
most people I’ve had this discussion with feel the “irrational” part arrives in the form of applying rights decided by humans for humans (which are subjective in and of themselves, even applied to humans) to animals.
one can see the practical application of such subjectivity and anthropomorphism by viewing the history of the animal use protocols I mentioned in my previous post.
at first, only mammals were considered “animals” for the purposes of having to justify research.
…then birds were added a year later.
then reptiles
then amphibians
then fish (3 years later).
see where I’m going with that?
At least us microbiologists are safe from accusations of cruelty to E. coli…so far.
The only way to deal with these terrorists is to appeal to their better natures – hating on them feels great, accomplishes nothing.
This is indeed troubling, and I would consider myself very supportive of the animal rights movement. Groups that promote reaching their goals through violence rarely impress or win over any of the public, and they often end up tarnishing the reputation of those in the movement who might persuade others. (That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t relish someone throwing a few wrenches into the works at Tyson or the rest, though. A little sabotage aimed at the worst offenders would be far more forgivable.)
The thing about “animal rights: in terms of moderation is, as far as I am concerned, the matter of what sort of rights are we proposing that animals have and for what reasons. Those reasons can be either irrational or rational depending on the arguments used to support them. For my own part, I simply feel that they should revolve around humane treatment and no unnecessary cruelty, etc.
It’s interesting how the term “terrorist” has now become synonymous with “person who uses violence in support of a cause that I believe does not warrant violence”. On that definition, every military enemy we’ve ever had has been a terrorist.
If that’s all “terrorist” means, then, well, calling someone a terrorist doesn’t make a case for your disagreement–it merely *asserts* it.
For my own part, I simply feel that they should revolve around humane treatment and no unnecessary cruelty, etc.
Then you’d be in agreement with every scientist I have ever known who actually works with animals.
reply to #27:
nobody is using that definition of “terrorist.” i have no idea where you got that idea. these people are terrorists because they target civilians who are not engaging in violence themselves.
Hey, do you guys remember those terrorists whose used bombs to persuade the Nazis to stop murdering Jews? Man, those terrorists were CRAZY!
“When animal rights activists petition and complain and wave signs around, that’s fine, they are within their rights.”
True, but they are still stupid and their cause is as worthless as the pro-lifers’.
More destructive than any act of animal rights terrorism is increasing public sympathy to the animal rights anti-research agenda, which will doom countless people to suffering and death that could have been prevented with scientific advances. AR terrorists are the bad cops while peaceful protesters and airhead AR celebrities are the good cops of animal liberationist extremism. Peaceful ‘moderates’ shift the Overton Window of animal rights extremism no less than the terrorists.
Europe has already seen more restrictions on animal research, including some successes for the lamebrained great ape rights project (endorsed by Dawkins and Goodall, who I expect better of). Not coincidentally, Euro AR terrorists ramped up the violence far earlier, including an incident in which a journalist had the initials of an AR group carved into his skin.
Animal rights extremism has followed the trajectory of anti-abortion terrorism – from targeting facilities to targeting individuals and their families. Anti-abortionists were always the tactical vanguard: physically disrupting the operations of facilities, publicizing threats, lunatic rationales for monstrous violence. Amanda Marcotte pointed out similarities between animal rights extremists and anti-abortionists. (I also did so, unpublished, nearly a decade ago.)
Poe sighting @15.
reply #29
“civilians who are not engaging in violence themselves”
Says you.
says me? what violence are they engaging in? please, report it to the police immediately so they can be arrested for it.
these people are terrorists because they target civilians who are not engaging in violence themselves.
Which also makes all military forces of at least the last 100 years terrorists.
Which is not to say that these firebombers aren’t terrorists, but one should be aware of just how widely that term has been used for dishonest propaganda purposes.
I say terrrssts target people intending to create fear in other people, usually both target groups are relatively defenseless and are often the same group.
Does that work for ya, dtlocke, terrrst sympathizer?
Reply to #33
Firebombing the house of the children was certainly targeting “civilians who are not engaging in violence themselves”, just to create terror.
A terrorist is someone who uses fear of violence to get other to do what they want; this clearly qualifies. Furthermore, are you really doubting the FIREBOMBING someone’s house is terrorism? That clearly goes beyond harrasment.
An analysis of “terrorism” worth considering: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199112–02.htm
For what it’s worth, the standard polisci definition of “terrorist” applies only to nonstate actors. The doctrine of Just War or Just Force requires that the actor using force have the authority to do so, as well as a reason. “Terrorism” refers specificaally to the type of asymmetric, paramilitary violence displayed here.
So, while states and armies may use terror against civilians as a manipulative tactic, and have done so throughout history, they are by definition not terrorists. Perhaps a silly definition, but it is a noteworthy distinction.
Please to ignore the typos, I’m using an OLPC XO during math class.
Yuck. Don’t lump animal rights activists in with these Grade A Assholes. Humans who intentionally hurt other humans are psychologically disturbed in their own right, independent of whatever ideological flag they wave.
the standard polisci definition of “terrorist” applies only to nonstate actors
How conveniently ad hoc. But, as Chomsky noted, the intellectual dishonesty goes further:
Replies, one at a time.
To #34. You didn’t just equate violence with illegal violence did you? C’mon now. Just because the law doesn’t say it’s illegal, doesn’t mean it ain’t violence. (And I’m sure you know, but the violence I’m speaking of is that being inflicted on non-human animals.)
To #36. That might work, depending on how you divide up the groups. If you divide the groups between those who are and who are not engaged in the activity that terrorists want stopped, then OK. But that’s not what’s happening in this case. In this case, the activists are targeting researchers engaged in certain practices with non-human animals with the intent of creating fear in all researches engaged in those same kinds of practices.
To #37. Of course the activists would consider the fact that the children lost their house collateral damage. I, for one, do *not* think that is acceptable collateral damage, but I wouldn’t call someone a terrorist just because they disagree with me over where to draw the line on collateral damage. Again, that’s changing the meaning of the word.
If there are more replies to be made by the time I post this, they will be in a comment below.
P.S. To see what lying bullshit Falyne is spouting, google “terrorist states”.
Of course it’s not terrorism if they are Catholics trying to free Ireland from the British. At least that is what I was told by my Catholic friends back in the 70’s.
Hey, do you guys remember those terrorists whose used bombs to persuade the Nazis to stop murdering Jews? Man, those terrorists were CRAZY!
Hmm, didn’t your junior high history teacher educate you on the historical evaluation of the allied firebombing attacks during WWII (both Germany and Japan)?
take a hike, bozo.
You didn’t just equate violence with illegal violence did you? C’mon now. Just because the law doesn’t say it’s illegal, doesn’t mean it ain’t violence. (And I’m sure you know, but the violence I’m speaking of is that being inflicted on non-human animals.)
if its not illegal violence, then individual citizens have no justification to punish researchers for it. we live in a society of laws and disagreeing with those laws is not justification to violate them. these terrorists have chosen to take the law into their own hands and engage in acts of illegal violence against fellow citizens who were neither tried, nor convicted in a court of the agreed-upon law of the land.
#42
Yuck. Don’t lump animal rights activists in with these Grade A Assholes.
Quite so. That would be like lumping atheists in with Stalinists. Most atheists don’t approve of Stalin’s behavior, and most animal rights activists don’t approve of these firebombers’ behavior. It’s fine for scientists to defend their experimental practices, but let’s do it honestly.
but I wouldn’t call someone a terrorist just because they disagree with me over where to draw the line on collateral damage. Again, that’s changing the meaning of the word.
bullshit.
what is the root of the word?
hint:
what does “terror” mean?
you’re trying to imply these attacks weren’t meant to terrorize?
you’re fooling yourself.
Reply to #38.
“are you really doubting the FIREBOMBING someone’s house is terrorism?”
Yes. Sorry to say, but whether a certain act counts as terrorism depends on more than what sort of building was targeted and what sort of weapon was used to do it.
but whether a certain act counts as terrorism depends on more than what sort of building was targeted and what sort of weapon was used to do it.
see above.
it depends on the intent.
If i firebomb your damn car to try and get you to stop doing what you’re doing, I’m damn well trying to put fear into your ever-loving heart.
you COULD argue as to whether the attack on the house was in fact attempted murder or not, but there’s little doubt the intent of it was to terrorize that family (and anyone else doing animal research).
Of course it’s not terrorism if they are Catholics trying to free Ireland from the British. At least that is what I was told by my Catholic friends back in the 70’s.
Nor if they are Contras trying to wrest Nicaragua from Sandinista rule, we were told. Nor if they are the ANC fighting against apartheid, we were told.
What these firebombers did was very wrong, but “terrorism” is a propaganda term that in practice is used selectively and thus dishonestly.
What these firebombers did was very wrong, but “terrorism” is a propaganda term that in practice is used selectively and thus dishonestly.
still, I don’t think it would be useful here to conflate the fact that groups misuse the term politically, with the fact that the obvious intent of these attacks was indeed to provoke fear.
dtlocke, I made no qualifiers for why terrrsts do what they do. They injure, kill, maim, use violence against the generally undefended (that’ll be in that “asymmetry” bit), with intent to affect others through fear.
What would you call it? Sending a message? Exactly so, ergo it is terrrsm. Is it the same as sniping some guy at a farmer’s market? No. Is it the same as planting a bomb on a bus? No, but almost the same.
Tell me, how are these attacks NOT intended to create fear among the targeted audience, assume researchers and their families?
still, I don’t think it would be useful here to conflate the fact that groups misuse the term politically, with the fact that the obvious intent of these attacks was indeed to provoke fear.
Perhaps you mistake me for dtlocke. I wrote “Which is not to say that these firebombers aren’t terrorists”.
Sheesh.
dtlocke, you may honestly believe that animal research involves unconscionable cruelty, violence, exploitation, what have you, and that committing violence against researchers is justified. Anti-abortion activists honestly believe that they are justly punishing those they feel are murderers.
Society disagrees. The rule of law disagrees. From a utilitarian calculus perspective, the societal consequences of unrestrained vigilantism, even IF morally justifiable, are very strongly negative. Even if you accept an argument of moral relativity from a philosophical perspective, and that punishing the wicked is pssibly justifiable, this kind of violence involves, as previously mentioned, the children, families, and associates of the “guilty”, which is patently unjust.
This is also, ultimately, somewhat futile. The point of these terror attacks, in theory, would be to discourage other researchers from conducting animal testing. But there’s no credible indications, based on the responses to past AR (or anti-abortion) terror, that this would be effective. A massive campaign on a scale we haven’t seen before *might* be able to overcome the a.) publish or perish self-interest and the b.) find useful information to help humanity altruism of animal researchers, but that would take a *lot* of just plain wrong collateral damage, and is really quite indefensible.
In short…. FAIL.
Reply to #47. Oh, yeah, *now* I remember what my high school teacher said: she said that all bombs dropped against the Nazi’s were act of terrorism! (C’mon now, just because SOME of the allied acts in WWII can rightly be considered acts of terrorism, doesn’t mean they ALL can. I expect more from someone who calls me bozo.)
Reply to #48. “if its not illegal violence, then individual citizens have no justification to punish researchers for it.” You’re kidding, right? I guess the same then goes for every act of violent resistant against legislation—for example, WWII resisters in Italy, France, and Germany.
Reply to #50. “what does “terror” mean? you’re trying to imply these attacks weren’t meant to terrorize?” Nope, I just don’t think that the word “terrorism” means “any act meant to terrorize”. As I’ve already said, it depends on whether the group targeted is participating in the activities of the group meant to be terrorized.
I wrote “Which is not to say that these firebombers aren’t terrorists”.
I was responding to your post at 53, sorry if I missed your early commentary (had to scroll back to 35).
Sheesh.
don’t start; the point was still valid.
dtllock @ 44: In this case, the activists are targeting researchers engaged in certain practices with non-human animals with the intent of creating fear in all researches engaged in those same kinds of practices.
Exactly. Targeting specific members of a group (in this case biologists conducting animal research) with the intent of creating fear in all members of the group is text-book terrorism. If that doesn’t qualify, there’s no such thing as terrorism.
C’mon now, just because SOME of the allied acts in WWII can rightly be considered acts of terrorism
qualifying now?
uh huh.
As I’ve already said, it depends on whether the group targeted is participating in the activities of the group meant to be terrorized.
huh? How do you figure that?
The issue here is one of invoking fear, nothing else.
seriously, if you can’t see that the intent of these attacks was to provoke terror, you must have something seriously wrong with your ability to reason.
here, try this on for size:
based on the type and intent (as provided in the notes, etc.), how would you BETTER classify these attacks?
acts of war??
Hey, TM, I’m not saying everyone *agrees* with that definition, especially not colloqually (especially since, as I said, states can, have, do, and will continue to, use terror as a weapon), but that’s the standard line in academic circles. It distinguishes between terror as a tactic, usable by any actor, state or not, and the specific phenomenon of non-state paramilitary agents committing terror.
Yes, the definition is most definitely selectively applied, and very, very problematically so. But it’s as accepted as any fuzzy problematic IR definition ever is.
(Int’l Relations (and Comp Sci Engineer) major here. I’ll admit I’m parroting directly from my Terrorism class at Columbia earlier this summer, but it’s not “lying bullshit”.)
Ohh geeze, my town in the news. Santa Cruz is FULL OF ACTIVIST WACKOS. This is disgusting, UCSC is a great school, and these nut-jobs piss me off more than anyone. Funny story, when they were discussing building the new bio-med building, which is what this whole thing is about, a bunch of tofu sporting idiots decided to take up residence in a redwood that they though was being cut down for the new building, but they weren’t even in the right spot! GET A CLUE!
don’t start; the point was still valid.
You’re the one who started; the point was misdirected, as nothing I wrote had anything to do with the conflation you referred to.
For a bit more insight into the term “terrorism”, see
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrorism
OK, I’ve had my say. I’ll just sign-off by saying that I agree with Truth Machine that
“What these firebombers did was very wrong, but “terrorism” is a propaganda term that in practice is used selectively and thus dishonestly.”
Like, Truth Machine, I do *not* think that what these people did was right–no, I think it was wrong. Also like Truth Machine, I think that the word “terrorism” is an often misused propaganda term. And unlike Truth Machine, I also think that this is just such a case of misusing the term (for the reasons given above).
All other inferences drawn about my views (for example, that I think that “animal research involves unconscionable cruelty, violence, exploitation, what have you, and that committing violence against researchers is justified”) should be avoided.
t that’s the standard line in academic circles.
You’re wrong.
I’ll admit I’m parroting directly from my Terrorism class at Columbia earlier this summer, but it’s not “lying bullshit”.
Fine, then you’re too fucking stupid to grasp that the views of one professor don’t equate to “standard line”, too fucking stupid to examine the readily available evidence that contradicts what you are told, and so fucking arrogant as to present your parroting of what you heard in summer school as “standard”.
as nothing I wrote had anything to do with the conflation you referred to.
then why even bother commenting:
but “terrorism” is a propaganda term that in practice is used selectively and thus dishonestly.
my point in bringing it up was just to avoid a sidetracking discussion on the misusage of the term politically, when we have a very real issue here wrt to actual use of terror.
don’t read too much into it, OK?
the use of the term terrorism HERE is most certainly not intended as propaganda, and is not dishonest.
clear?
clear?
It’s clear that you’re the same old asshole.
Sorry to see you leave, dt. I wonder what would it take for these bombs to be “terrorism” in your opinion*.
*Some people have a way with words, others…mmmm..not have way? -more or less, Steve Martin
It’s clear that you’re the same old asshole.
I’m praying for you. As hard as I can.
:P
the use of the term terrorism HERE is most certainly not intended as propaganda, and is not dishonest.
You’re certainly wrong on the first point. Because of the way that the term has been used in our society, the label always entails a propagandistic aspect.
Crikey you two. If you must pray, take it to the pews.
dtlocke, I may have jumped to conclusions about your views, but it was drawn from your initial post that sarcastically compared using bombs to stop animal research and using bombs to stop Nazi medical research. Which is… inflammatory.
Like James said, this is literally *textbook* terrorism. The term gets fuzzy around the edges, and is used in problematic and developed-nation-centric ways, and is used in propaganda to ‘frame’ the enemy…. but in this case, it’s justified.
Then you’d be in agreement with every scientist I have ever known who actually works with animals. – Ichthyic
I should hope so.
I would love to see SC step in here with some commentary about the term. Meanwhile, I’m off to other pastures.
You’re certainly wrong on the first point.
nope.
Because of the way that the term has been used in our society, the label always entails a propagandistic aspect.
always?
Jerry Vlasak ought to be arrested for his comments.
He all but supported the actions of the fire-bombers, by his comments:
He was completely unapologetic– and ought to be arrested for complacency at the very least….
…what is more drastic than destroying someone’s home?
Killing them outright?
The man is evil.
Is the issue here the definition of terrorism is it the increasing violent illegal tactics of the animal rights anti-research agenda? The latter is the phenomenon of interest, not TM, OM’s rhetorical onanism (yes, I know what the sin of Onan really was, who cares).
Terrorism, schmerrorism. Call it “violent illegal tactics.” Tiresome issues about nonstate actors, state terrorism, guerrillas, legitimacy, propaganda blah blah blah can be avoided. Yes, I know that the term and concept of terrorism makes a difference in regard to public perception and law enforcement, especially post-9/11. Duly noted.
These firebombings are a watershed, an ominous one, in the history of the animal rights movement.
Maybe you should think about upgrading your comment system to something more Slashdot-like. I’ve never seen a comment thread of yours that didn’t spiral out of control and explode.
Oh, one of the modes could be “-1: standard misguided religious argument”.
dtlocke don’t when people draw inferences about your views when you write things like:
“Hey, do you guys remember those terrorists whose used bombs to persuade the Nazis to stop murdering Jews? Man, those terrorists were CRAZY!”
Equating holocaust victims with lab mice = fail. You may have just been trying to make a joke about the use of the word terrorist, but the implication of your analogy is that defending the life of a lab animal through violence is as equally noble as defending the lives of humans. That kind of implication usually indicates that someone is a supporter of this kind of eco-terrorism. Like how PETA’s add campaign “the holocaust on your plate” juxtaposed pictures of the Nazi death camps with those of chicken farms.
Bob at #72. ‘Take it to the pews’. Love it!
Count me as an animal rights activist who deplores the use of violence against people (as opposed to, in some cases, property).
OTOH, those of you who claim that animal experimentation is/can be humane are either being disingenuous or are in denial.
People don’t really do things to animals that they don’t do to other people, either. The root enemy is an ethic of oppression that says it’s okay to define certain classes of beings (women, people of color, people of other cultures or religions, children, disabled people, other species) as arbitrarily lower than you are, and then give yourself a license to exploit or oppress them based on that designation. (Witness Jews being called “rats” in Nazi Germany, and Tutsi being called “cockroaches” in Rwanda.) The ultimate solution is an ethic of universal compassion. Although that may seem utopian, we’re getting there. The animal rights movement, for instance, has made phenomenal progress in a short time. So has nonviolent Buddhism.
Ay yi yi yi yiiiiiii…..
Truth machine, for what it’s worth, I normally enjoy your vitriol against actual trolls, but, sheesh. I’m arguing in good faith here.
And it’s not just summer school… that’s just the class I had that dealt specifically with the topic. Throughout my entire undergraduate career, the distinction was drawn (with notes of how blurry it got and how weird the entire concept of legitimate state actors could get) between state use of questionable tactics and the specific phenomenon or terrorism.
Specifically, I brought it up to distinguish between the civilian targeting of Dresden (terror, arguably) and the civilian targeting of this act (terrorism).
In short, while all this is ENTIRELY debatable, I certainly take issue with being accused of “spouting lying bullshit”. C’mon, leave that stuff for the magical thinkers, not those who disagree on academic points.
When I’m at an actual computer, I’ll look at the links you posted. I like Chomsky; brilliant computer scientist, and he always makes you think, even if some of his points can be a little out there.
My preference for the term “terrorism” here is based in part on my feeling that if I’m willing to call the anti-choicers who murder doctors and bomb clinics and the Timothy McVeigh types, “terrorists” I’d better be willing to call these guys terrorists too.
I have to agree with Falyne that the definition of terror that brands both these groups “terrorists” is the one that’s standard in academic study of the phenomenon of terrorism — terrorists are non-state actors who use violent tactics with the intention of creating fear in the target populace and thereby causing a change in the behavior of said populace. I cite as my source the book “What Terrorists Want”, by Louise Richardson, who spends the first chapter in an extensive discussion of how the term “terrorism” should be defined. I agree that politically it’s a very loaded term, but I don’t think it’s ambiguous technically.
Certainly, the animal rights extremists (and the anti-choice extremists) who are willing to murder are only a small minority at the very fringe of the movement, and are probably entirely unrepresentative of the rest of the movement. I wouldn’t label either the anti-choice movement or the animal rights movement as a whole as “terrorist”. (Although I would label the anti-choice movement as “assholes”.)
If we can’t use the word “terrorist” because it’s too loaded, we lose our ability to identify and meaningfully discuss a fairly well-delineated class of phenomena. Also, I do think we can call an action terrorist without making a specific moral judgment on whether the terrorism is justifiable or unjustifiable.
@ repertoire
“Does similar tolerance of irrational but moderate animal-rights activists provide cover for their extremists?”
Sorry, what is irrational about the cause for animal-rights?
Hilly Rettig:
“The root enemy is an ethic of oppression that says it’s okay to define certain classes of beings (women, people of color, people of other cultures or religions, children, disabled people, other species) as arbitrarily lower than you are, and then give yourself a license to exploit or oppress them based on that designation.”
Other species? Why stop there? What about other kingdoms? Prove to me that plants and fungi aren’t sentient. Does a flower not grow towards the light? Do trees not bleed?
I will take you seriously when you do your part to stop the genocide of mushrooms. Pizza with ‘shrooms: the horror, the horror.
Sorry, typo, that should be Hillary Rettig.
Thanks, Anne. Everything you just (84) said. ^_^
Other species? Why stop there? What about other kingdoms? Prove to me that plants and fungi aren’t sentient. Does a flower not grow towards the light? Do trees not bleed?
Goddamned antiretrovirals! Let HIV live!
OTOH, those of you who claim that animal experimentation is/can be humane are either being disingenuous or are in denial.
wait, who’s in denial?
every year I worked with fish after 1990, I had to file an 11 page animal use protocol to justify why the research was important, why I had to use live fish to accomplish it, and all of the measures I was taking to provide good husbandry. Moreover, I had to document all of the measures used to reduce the “pain and potential suffering” of the fish involved in various surgical procedures, which included the use of various proven anesthetics.
In fact, even without these requirements in place, all of the researchers I know would have already been doing all they can to minimize any necessary effects on the animals they work with.
face it. what you REALLY mean is that you can’t, in your ignorance, justify ANY animal research, regardless of the benefit.
Because we do research on animals doesn’t mean we have no respect for them, or care about them at all.
In fact, many times the research we are doing is directly related to helping them recover from major disasters, or to help direct better policy aimed at keeping a given population from disappearing altogether.
I could give you dozens of examples I’m personally familiar with, if you are actually interested.
bottom line: if you shut down animal research, you doom far more than just the humans that benefit from it.
“The root enemy is an ethic of oppression that says it’s okay to define certain classes of beings (women, people of color, people of other cultures or religions, children, disabled people, other species) as arbitrarily lower than you are, and then give yourself a license to exploit or oppress them based on that designation.”
A burning building thought experiment for you:
A Syrian hamster and a man with MS in a burning building. You can save only one. Which do you save? State your reasons and come back to me on how arbitrary the distinction between human beings and animals in terms of worth is.
They’ve been quiet for awhile but this is the typical MO of the animal liberation crowd (not so much the animal rights group of zanies).
The ALF, ELF, SHAC and others have been on the FBI lists for years. Arson, property damage, blah blah blah. Peta, the H$U$, a few more are all about the money they rake in from suckers who think they want to help animals.
They’re the guys who also bring you dog ownership bans, mandatory sterilization laws, anti-farming, anti-hunting, anti-research etc, etc, etc legislation. They lobby at all levels of government to push their agenda.
It’s all part of their master plan to liberate animals, including domestic housepets, from being enslaved by the evil humans – who are animals too, but I guess they didn’t get the memo.
There are so many holes in their ideology it looks like Swiss cheese but most of the useful idiots who believe their hype and do the legwork are unaware of the history or philosophy behind the movement.
It was explained to me by a political philosopher as being Utilitarianism or preferences Utilitarianism. It’s not about any animal, including us, having rights of any kind.
Humans are technically animals. So the animals rights activists are being mean to animals. Oh, the blessed irony.
I agree with PZ’s statement: “When they start firebombing researchers cars and homes, putting children at risk and damaging property, they have become nothing but terrorists and criminals.”
“When they start firebombing researchers cars and homes, putting children at risk and damaging property…”
Don’t the researchers matter just as much, if not more, than the children?
Oh FFS.
State terror.
Graphic images of state terror.
Very very ugly. Yes, State Actors commit terroristic acts. So do nonstate actors. That does not mean firebombing houses is NOT terroristic.
To keep on my fluffy humanities major hat for a second, there *are* good-faith arguments that the exploitation of thinking creatures, at least mammalia, is inherently wrong, doubly so in the case of cruelty.
In the real world, I’m a (wishfully)pet-owning (past) horse-riding carnivore of grilling doom. Like most folks here, I think that the benefits to humanity outweigh any moral problems with animal research, and my buddies in the field have impressed upon me the restrictions and paperwork they work under. So, I don’t often *buy* the arguments, but I won’t dismiss them (within reason) out of hand.
Colugo, don’t be willfully dense. The point of (sensible) animal rights activism is not that everything with a spark of life must be given absolutely identical treatment and defended, but instead that we ought to recognize that there’s nothing specifically special about being human. “We’re humans, they’re not,” justifies nothing. We need to consider what exactly it is about other humans that causes us to consider them to have rights worth defending (generally it’s something along the lines of the ability to suffer, experience emotions, think, communicate, etc.), and if we don’t want to be giant hypocrites, then we need to try treat other creatures with these capacities decently according to the degree to which they are capable of benefiting from such treatment.
Protocols for research and other animal handling do generally recognize this to some degree (in the sense of requiring better treatment for animals with more complex brains), but not nearly enough for us to say that we’re actually recognizing and respecting the animals’ interests (a la Peter Singer) to the degree that we would recognize such interests were they humans at the same capability level.
I’m not necessarily saying that no animal research should be permissible, but I am saying that we need an ethos that doesn’t make arbitrary distinctions on the basis of species. Non-arbitrary distinctions (like, hey, something not even having a brain, or not very much of one) are another story entirely.
Ichthyic Re #70,
Praying? How about sacrificing a lamb and then eating it?
Probably tastes better than transubstatiated crackers.
Licks chops just thinking about it.
Seriously though, how come you never hear of animal rights activists protesting outside of a slaughter house dressed up as Ronald the Clown.
While you are at it why don’t you take on the commercial fisherman or the Red Lobster Chain? BTW, just to really piss off the moronic animal rights activists I spearfish and if any sharks try to steal my catch I slap them on the snout! I do have a soft spot for the corals though.
Colugo – that “plants have feelings, too” shtick is way old. if you’re going to ridicule, at least try to be original (and meaningful, btw). Hill
And, in regard to somebody’s example of whether to save a hamster or a human with MS from a burning building, may I propose the counter-example of a chimpanzee vs. a brain-dead human (or, hell, a tray of frozen embryos, while we’re at it)? I dunno about you, but I’d save the chimp every time. Everything that made the human being an actual person with interests is gone, and the embryos don’t actually have any interests yet, whereas the chimp is still a thinking, feeling creature. It’s not the species that makes a difference, it’s the presence of a mind and a capacity for suffering.
I always considered PETA a hypocritical organization. Are humans not animals?? I figure that I will take PETA seriously the day they start campaigning to ‘save the rat’ in, say, southeastern Africa. Or, set up ‘Fire ants/fleas forever’ as non-profit daughter organizations.
On terrorism. I recall a news story from the early 90’s about a bomb found in the mathematics section of an old bookstore in (I think) Londonderry. Authorities thought the bomb had been planted in the early ’80’s. There was no possible message beyond ‘we are senseless murderers’ that this act could have conveyed. Also, tough to imagine the type of individual who almost certainly sat in rapt attention to the news waiting for their 30 seconds of infamy.
Ichthyic – I wish I could help you see how fundamentally nonsensical this statement is, “Moreover, I had to document all of the measures used to reduce the “pain and potential suffering” of the fish involved in various surgical procedures.”
If you want to reduce someone’s pain and suffering, don’t force them to undergo surgery.
There is simply no way to force surgery on someone in a compassionate way.
Your ends justify means argument is more compelling, even though I might disagree with the conclusion you draw.
Hillary
Praying? How about sacrificing a lamb and then eating it?
now you’re talking.
lambchops sauteed in olive oil, rosemary and garlic.
*drool*
I think I just figured out what’s for dinner*.
Seriously though, how come you never hear of animal rights activists protesting outside of a slaughter house dressed up as Ronald the Clown.
in the annals of “nothing new under the sun”, I’d wager money that someone actually has.
McDonald’s is a favorite target for a great many groups.
I do have a soft spot for the corals though.
soft corals or hard?
*for the animal rightists: I make sure I anesthetize my lambs before i slaughter them, don’t worry.
Anne N #100: In either of those cases (brain-dead human/embryos), I’d probably agree with you.
I don’t see how that’s a counter-example to the situation I proposed, though.
[What about a milkman with bad teeth and a book made from the skin of a relative? I kid, obviously. :)]
If you want to reduce someone’s pain and suffering, don’t force them to undergo surgery.
I wish you could see how nonsensical that statement is.
Why don’t you go to your nearest hospital, find patients waiting for surgery, and tell them how their suffering will be reduced by avoiding surgery.
better yet, find the nearest veterinary hospital and argue with the first injured dog you find that is scheduled for surgery.
OK. I should probably start paying attention to class again. This is infinitely more interesting of a thread than various theorems involving Turing machines, but, well, you don’t get graded on internet arguments ^_^
Everything that made the human being an actual person with interests is gone
and if you were the parents of that person?
how much value would you place on saving your child?
it’s all relative.
I don’t see how that’s a counter-example to the situation I proposed, though.
you’re exactly right, it’s not.
To Caveat and some others:
1) utilitarianism and rights (as in animal rights) are contradictory viewpoints
2) Lots of animal people, including me, deplore PETA and its tactics. It’s inaccurate to lump us all activists into one group.
3) Anyone with a cursory grasp of recent American history would not use the FBI’s watchlist as a kind of moral arbiter.
4) A lot of the vitriol and slander I’m reading here against peaceful animal activists is similar to that on Rod Dreher’s site about so-called “militant atheists.”
5) All of the justifications people here are using for the oppression of animals (including “they’re not human”) were once also used to justify the oppression of humans.
ML King, Jr.: the arc of history is long, but it inclines toward justice.
Hillary
Mac’s supper club was a favorite target of PETA. When the big ‘D’ was faced with the ‘Un-happy meal’ campaign, they settled and now have oversight to insure that the beef dies happy.
[What about a milkman with bad teeth and a book made from the skin of a relative? I kid, obviously. :)]
Given the choice, I save the woman with the short skirt.
Colugo – that “plants have feelings, too” shtick is way old. if you’re going to ridicule, at least try to be original (and meaningful, btw).
it is noted that though old, you failed to address it.
…which is why it’s hung around so long, actually.
see my comment along the same lines at #22.
@102: Fish are “someone” now?
What, Ichtyhic, you mean that you went ahead with the surgery even after you’d tried to persuade those fish that it was for the greater good?
They weren’t impressed with your arguments, the diagrams and the powerpoint presentation?
Told you no, I’ll bet. Or probably just floated there in that inscrutable piscine way that fish have, the cold blooded little buggers.
NC Paul, perhaps it’s not directly counter to your views (I’m having trouble sorting through all the yelling around here), but I wanted to point out that the distinction here, as far as which creatures have rights deserving of protection, should not be seen as between humans and things that are not human, but instead as between creatures that think and feel to some extent and creatures that don’t. Except it’s not really a hard distinction, more of a graded scale, of course.
I don’t really see any reason other than basic chauvinism to intrinsically value human lives over non-human lives, just because of species. And I think there is a tendency to undervalue the capacity other creatures have for thinking and feeling simply because of the fact that they’re not (for the most part) capable of much in the way of linguistic communication. People tend to be very dismissive, saying “Oh, it’s just an animal,” and failing to look any deeper than that. (Not considering non-linguistic communication channels, for example.)
Not that everybody has these attitudes, by any means, but it is definitely showing up in this discussion, as it often does in discussions of animal rights.
They weren’t impressed with your arguments, the diagrams and the powerpoint presentation?
sadly, no.
that was before I really got good at making slide presentations, though.
;)
I don’t have any problems convincing fish anymore of just about anything.
oh wait, I think I’ve said too much…
MY FISH ARMIES ARE COMING TO CRUSH YOU!!!!
*ahem*
(all hail Dagon)
A lot of people, including some commenters here, are using ‘animal rights/liberation’ and ‘animal welfare’ interchangeably. It’s a common mistake – you see it in media and in legislatures too.
The AR/AL crowd is NOT about animal welfare. They are about ending the association between humans and all animals, domestic or wild.
Obviously, no sane person wants any animals to suffer – even if they aren’t fond of non-human animals or even if they aren’t interested in them, most people want to see them treated humanely.
The whackjobs at Peta killed 97% of the homeless pets they took custody of in 2006. They killed 2981, adopted out 12. In 2007 they did a bit better, killing 92%.
They also took animals from shelters in N. Carolina, ostensibly to find them new homes. They killed them right outside in the van, then dumped their bodies in a container behind Piggly Wiggly (a grocery store). This was done repeatedly. They were convicted of littering. The DEA is looking into their illegal transporting of controlled substances (their famous blue solution death kits, don’t leave your dogs unattended, folks) across state lines without a permit.
You don’t have to dig deep to discover what they’re all about – and it most definitely isn’t animal welfare. That goes for the H$U$ and its many affliates, as well as Farm Sanctuary, Earth First and all the rest of them.
They are indeed terrorists but are more like the old organized crime families – all related, all operating on the surface as legitimate, while using thug tactics and breaking the law. Their agenda is geared toward extinction, control and the ending of the human-other animal bond. They’re fanatics. It’s a cult.
I agree that humans are not necessarily superior to other animals, they are different from most of them, that’s all. I agree that being different does not make one superior or inferior. I treat animals well.
However, due to my extensive research into this issue I can say with complete conviction that I am aligned with the animal welfare community – not with the animal rights or liberation stealth campaign.
TrueBob(#110): What if she’s also a dishonest, hair-selling mortician?
I know. Stupid question. :D
1) utilitarianism and rights (as in animal rights) are contradictory viewpoints
hardly.
two entirely different issues.
would you say that utilitarianism and human rights are in contradiction?
if not, and you believe animals should be extended similar rights, then your argument has to extend in the same fashion.
it doesn’t.
2) Lots of animal people, including me, deplore PETA and its tactics. It’s inaccurate to lump us all activists into one group.
irrelevant. nobody has lumped YOU into a group. your arguments are being attacked on their own merits.
will YOU lump yourself as being part of “Lots of animal people” and attempt to make that an argumentum ad populum?
4) A lot of the vitriol and slander I’m reading here against peaceful animal activists
vitriol? sure.
slander? not hardly.
5) All of the justifications people here are using for the oppression of animals (including “they’re not human”) were once also used to justify the oppression of humans.
absolute bullshit. Oppression itself only makes sense wrt to humans to begin with.
just like human rights, btw.
stop anthropomorphizing.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. At all. I’m not sure what that second sentence is supposed to mean, but taking it at face value: bullshit!
I’ll give you an example with which I’m very familiar: me. Long, long ago I worked for a couple of years in a cardiovascular research lab, associated with a major teaching hospital. The docs there were interested in improving survival rates after heart attacks. They had ideas for improved treatment regimes, but could not ethically experiment on humans that had had heart attacks. Cell culture irrelevant; computer modelling silly. We studied dogs. These dogs were obtained from pounds on the morning they were scheduled to be euthanized. I was a lowly technician and my job was to take care of the dogs–this included walking each one, individually, every day. I also helped out with surgery and various cardiac performance measurements (ECGs, cardiac output, etc.). I can assure you that those animals loved me and I them. We gave them heart attacks by carefully occluding a coronary artery with a balloon catheter (under general anesthesia, of course). Then we followed their recovery for several months, during which they were under various drug regimens, after which I helped to kill them (barbiturate OD) and remove their hearts for histological study.
Those dogs were treated more than just “humanely.” They would have been unceremoniously killed and dumped if left at the pound. Of course I would never dream of giving a human an infarction, and neither would the cardiologists I worked for; quite the opposite, since outside the research lab they worked to prevent heart attacks in coronary-disease patients.
You’re simply wrong.
Anne N at #113:
I don’t think many biologists working with animals have a problem seeing the distinction between a monkey and a fish in terms of capacity for pain and suffering (and that’s reflected both in their welfare and the nature of the procedures that can be carried out on different species).
From what I’ve seen on this thread, it’s the anti-experimenters who seem to be struggling with that distinction and the difference between people and animals (I’m looking at you, Hillary).
Humans may be animals, but animals are not humans (and that is not an arbitrary statement by any stretch of the imagination).
insure that the beef dies happy
happy?
aside from the obvious “happy meal” joke…
I wonder how one determines when a cow is “happy”.
They stop regular visits to the vet for bovine anti-depressants?
Ichthyic, if I thought a mechanically-supported corpse was a person, I would’ve done something to interfere when my grandmother decided to have my grandfather’s feeding tube removed after he ended up brain dead from an operation to repair a detached aorta. But instead, as a rational adult, I recognized that the thing that made him my grandfather had already died. It was a relief when they finally stopped the necromancy so that we could bury him and mourn properly. I wouldn’t have thought twice about saving a box of crickets from a burning building before “saving” the reanimated meat that used to be my grandfather. It’s the mind that counts, and the mind was gone, so there was nothing there worth saving.
I just drove by the school, and a large number of faculty are gathered at the entrance, holding signs (violence is not the answer, etc). Good for them. This may be on the news soon, as there was a lot of media there.
NC Paul, I would not dispute that the vast majority of animal researchers understand the difference between a fish and a monkey. This was not the argument I was trying to make.
Let me state more clearly: the problem is not that most humans fail to understand the differences amongst non-human animals, it’s that they draw a larger distinction than is perhaps strictly warranted by the facts between humans and non-humans. And I think a big part of the reason this happens is that there’s this sort of alienation created by most non-human creatures’ lack of human-style linguistic capacity. People tend to get hung up on this and miss more subtle non-linguistic expression which, if recognized, might change their evaluation of how similar these other animals are to humans.
These animal rights activists need to realise that people are animals too.
Remember when terrorism in the US meant an abortion clinic bombing? I’ve been hoping to get people’s comments on abortion versus animal testing here: The Abortion Jihad I read about these fires shorting after I posted that…crazy people!
Caveat @#115: Ramen. I used to think that I was for animal rights until someone explained what animal welfare is all about, and changed my tune rather rapidly. I can’t remember details, but the conversation essentially evolved into a definition of “rights” as “privileges with responsibilities.” If you gave an animal “rights” and they were (inevitably) incapable of holding up the “responsibility” end of the bargain, then you’re pretty much just giving them “privileges.” See also reproductive rights and welfare kings/queens. ;)
@Ichthyic 120. The better word might have been contented. I had to keep with the joke though. Mac’s has hired a REAL Animal Science scientist. She determined that distressed cattle bellow more frequently and in a higher frequency range than contented cattle. This was the basis for ‘happy.’ The work does have a large subjective element, but it is known that the flight-fright reaction in cattle does make the resulting beef less tender. It has been over a decade since I last had a ‘Big Mac.’
I would’ve done something to interfere when my grandmother decided to have my grandfather’s feeding tube removed after he ended up brain dead from an operation to repair a detached aorta.
well, that’s the thing, eh?
YOU would react differently than say, the parents of Terry Schiavo, right?
if that whole escapade indicated anything, it’s that people have very different ideas of the relative value of things, even when applied to people.
…let alone animals.
People tend to get hung up on this and miss more subtle non-linguistic expression which, if recognized, might change their evaluation of how similar these other animals are to humans.
no, that’s not it at all. You’re trying to present it as if we just had a universal translator, we’d have no problems giving the same rights to animals we give to ourselves.
that just isn’t the case. It’s not just a subtle difference in communication, it’s an entirely different experience from the ground up.
you simply cannot place yourself into the shoes of a bear, or a fish, or a bird.
this is why the notion of rights, as applied to humans, only makes sense when applied to humans (and often even only within specific groups of humans at specific times).
If one COULD somehow get a hold of some kind of “universal translator”, I’m absolutely sure any species one would care to apply it to that isn’t human would result in notions, that while understandable linguistically, wouldn’t really make sense to us from our perspective at all.
It makes no more sense for us to apply our sense of “rights” to any given species, than that species’ notion of what constitutes “rights” would apply to us.
She determined that distressed cattle bellow more frequently and in a higher frequency range than contented cattle. This was the basis for ‘happy.’
Yeah, I figured it would be something like that. On our end, we observed various fishes out in the field to understand how they behave (not just us – there was of course decades of work previous to work from), and then looked for notable differences in captivity, then moved to adjust their local environment until differences in behavior were minimized. If you can get fishes to mate, you’ve pretty much sewn up the “happy” angle.
animal research for the benefit of animals.
I wonder if the extremists would accept the value of it?
meh, I already know the answer.
Duh! It’s how short the skirt is.
Here’s a thought:
The animal rights activists shouldn’t be using the medical system, then. If they have such a problem with the research that goes into the drugs and treatment they take, they shouldn’t use it.
Until the male goes psycho, eats the babies and kills the mother, stuffing her body down in the rocks.
dang, I forgot to add
…on a bus in Canada.
trave @ 17:
“Also, if there are tissue culture or other methods not involving animals, you have to show that those will not work.”
Yes, but that’s BS, because tissue culture involves animals in a pretty nasty way. Bovine serum is extracted via cardiac puncture without anesthesia, so my cell culture experiments generally involve more animal suffering (albeit offsite) than my animal ones do.
Ichthyic, I think you’re misconstruing me entirely with this “universal translator” idea. Obviously the experience of a cat or a chimpanzee is not the same as the experience of a human. The lack of language, the different body structure, the different social structure, all of these make for vast differences. But there are also an awful lot of similarities, due to our shared evolutionary heritage. Our brains have pretty much the same parts, our bodies have analogous limbs and organs, we eat more or less the same things, and so forth. In the same way that it’s possible to understand, albeit incompletely, the experiences of a human of a different gender or from a different culture, it should be possible (although to a lesser degree) to understand something of the perspective of closely-related non-human animals, or at the very least to credit them with having a perspective worthy of our recognition.
Phledge has a reasonable point above about the distinction between “rights” and “welfare” as it regards non-human species, in the sense that it does not currently seem likely that any known non-human species are going to be participating in our political discourse or signing employment contracts or anything of the sort. If I’ve used the term “rights” anywhere above, it was carelessness on my part, when the more correct term, from my perspective, would be “interests”. The thing that I would say is in order to have a decent society we ought to act towards other creatures, human or otherwise, on the basis of a careful examination of and respect for their interests. Most humans’ interests will include an interest in the rights we earn by shouldering our responsibilities as members of our society. Non-humans’ interests will include more basic things, like the availability of a comfortable living environment, protection from stress to their communities, and so forth. And, yes, sometimes interests will conflict and we’ll have to decide whose interests “win”, but the decision shouldn’t be based on who it is who has those interests, but rather on a weighing of the interests themselves and deciding which interests are the more important.
Also, in re Terry Schiavo, I think you’re confusing two issues here. One is the interest of Terry Schiavo in continuing to live, which was non-existent on account of the fact that the part of her that had been capable of having interests was dead (according to all evidence-based standards). The other is the interest of her parents in continuing to animate her corpse, as they had a non-evidence-based belief that she was not dead. If I had to choose between rescuing Terry Schiavo or rescuing a chimpanzee from our hypothetical burning building, the choice would be between the chimpanzee’s interest in living (and not suffering horribly as it died) and Schiavo’s parents’ interest in not believing their daughter had been allowed to die. For me, the chimp would still win. (Although perhaps not the box of crickets. ;-) And, to the degree that our legal system should be founded only on evidence-based belief and not on evidence-free belief, I think this set of priorities should be the one which is supported by the law.
Re# 120,
Dunno, but as the parent of a kid with Aspergers I have been led to examine a few rather unique ways of looking at the world.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165123
Look, in a world without bibles providing easy (if terrifyingly inconsistent) answers, people are left to their own devices to find a system of morality to guide their actions. Under those systems (Utilitarianism, etc.), it is difficult to find a morally defensible justification for harming animals for food, research, etc.
Now, if you are a person who believes in the rights of animals to live unharmed by humans whenever possible, if you know there is a research facility killing animals by the thousands, it is pretty difficult to not take drastic action to try and help them. To be clear, I’m not defending these actions. They are extremely dangerous and ultimately obscure whatever point is trying to be made. But if you want to talk about perspective, how come blowing up a car is called ‘violence,’ while killing literally billions of animals every year for food and research is called ‘agriculture’?
My point is that as rationalists, we assert that it is possible for people to act morally without the influence of religion and it is too easy to use the actions of a few extremists as an excuse to never really address the question of what our moral obligations are to animals. In talking to people about veganism, the argument in favor of eating meat usually comes down to some variation of “God says it’s okay to eat animals” and won’t go any further. In this setting, I would be interested in hearing how people capable of thought more sophisticated than that justify their decision to eat meat.
What a disservice they’ve done to the animal-rights movement (which I otherwise support).
@True Bob. Until the male eats all the young, kills the female, hides her body in the rocks, realizes he’s totally not f**k*d, and changes sex for the remaining male- and they both lived happily ever after. I, not being an Ichthyologist, do not know if those fish capable of sex change are also those fish possessing modified fins forming an intermittent organ.
Ich –
1) “Why don’t you go to your nearest hospital, find patients waiting for surgery, and tell them how their suffering will be reduced by avoiding surgery.” Those people aren’t being forced, and are furthermore capable (usually) of giving informed consent.
2) I’m not the one saying rights are antithetical to utilitarianism – philosophers do. Utilitarians explicitly do not believe in rights, but the greatest good depending on the circumstances. Look it up.
3) “Oppression itself only makes sense wrt to humans to begin with.” In your opinion. You’d have a hard time proving it logically. Must be nice to have the option of descending into dogma when convenient.
Hillary
Re: NC Paul
Here’s a better example: if there’s an old man and a baby in a burning building, and you can only save one, which do you save? If you save the baby, does that mean you have right to eat the old man? To experiment on him?
Hillary, I have no doubt that other animals, say mice, respond to pain. But I have enormous reservations that they feel pain in a manner at all comparable humans.
Detailed and abstract communication with other humans has provided evidence that other humans feel pain in similar manner that I do. Unless you can provide convincing evidence that this also applies to mice, then what right do you have to prevent other people, who do not share the extent of your empathy, from utilizing such animals to improve their own welfare?
Now in the case of causing harm to animals, just for the sake of causing harm, you have an effective argument in that we can not be certain that rodents do not feel pain in such a way that is compatible with your empathic imaginations. However when there is a tangible benefit to be gained from experiments on mice, the onus of objective evidence is on you. Your capacity for empathy does not qualify, otherwise we would also need outlaw killings in movies (as many do empathize with the plight of fictional characters).
Wow, great analogy. Do you know Pete Rooke?
It’s a tasty source of protein. But why does a decision to eat meat need more justification that your decision to eat, say, soy?
Those people aren’t being forced
I knew you object based on that triviality, which is why i suggested you visit the animal hospital instead, where consent of the animal is not an issue.
I’m not the one saying rights are antithetical to utilitarianism – philosophers do.
dishonest. by using their arguments (and selectively) you are the one saying it.
don’t hide behind your protest sign.
You’d have a hard time proving it logically.
that’s some serious projection on your part. However, you could prove me wrong by presenting anything to actually support your counter argument.
But why does a decision to eat meat need more justification that your decision to eat, say, soy?
Moreover, does a lion have to justify eating a zebra?
Until the male goes psycho, eats the babies and kills the mother, stuffing her body down in the rocks.
sounds like the next sci-fi channel saturday night movie?
“It was love under the waves… until something went HORRIBLY WRONG!”
yeah, yeah, having seen it myself, fish do tend to have individual “personalities”, and you’ll see something similar to what you described happen in the wild too.
In fact, my major prof spent decades studying how mate choice works in Cichlids (specifically the Midas Cichlid), including some inevitable and very violent “divorces” from time to time.
much of the work was funded by NIH for over 10 years (operative word: was – *sigh*), and was utilized in looking at the development of aggression in humans as well.
http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/barlow/publications.html
start with #70 and see the progression.
…
I, not being an Ichthyologist, do not know if those fish capable of sex change are also those fish possessing modified fins forming an intermittent organ.
*thinks hard*
none that i can think of off hand (not saying there aren’t any, it’s just that the dozens of representative samples that come to mind are all external fertilizers; both the protogynous and protandrous ones).
Charnov published a nice short synthesis of the theory regarding sequential hermaphroditism in this article from 1982:
http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/9/m009p305.pdf
the person who initially did a lot of the field work to establish protogyny and the mating systems of some of the fish that exhibit it was my undergrad adviser, Bob Warner (the relevant references are in the biblio of the paper I linked to above).
A decision to eat meat needs more justification than a decision to eat soy because these days the vast majority of American meat production is based on fairly hideous cruelty to animals. Temple Grandin has done some pretty good work on improving the conditions of animal rearing and slaughter, but we’re still a long way from being anywhere decent particularly on the animal rearing front. So when we eat a hamburger or a chicken sandwich or a plate of bacon, the animal that meat came from probably had a life where it was confined in a space so small it could barely move, possibly deliberately mutilated to prevent it from developing nervous behaviors as a result of stress, and fed food not really appropriate to its digestive system, among other things.
On the other hand when a lion eats a zebra out on the African savannah, the zebra has spent its life in the environment it evolved to occupy. Maybe it’s not a perfectly happy or safe life, but it’s a life in which the zebra has pretty much been free to do all the things zebras might be expected to enjoy doing, like eating and mating and wandering around in herds. And the lion kills it as quickly as possible, because zebras are pretty badass and dangerous and no way does a lion want to draw out a fight with one (instead of, say, confining it in a truck and dragging it on a long, terrifying cross-country trek to the slaughterhouse).
Not that this matters to the lions, of course. But a zebra left with its herd and in danger of being eaten by a lion nevertheless seems like it’s had its interests treated a lot more respectfully than a chow or a chicken or a pig in a modern CAFO.
I’m not going to say we shouldn’t eat meat at all, but I do think we should make sure we aren’t being incredibly brutal about the process of rearing the animals we intend to eat.
Real funny, me. Obviously I meant to say “cow” here.
PZ, my response to the vast majority of what you have to say is a deeply heart-felt “right on!” And even in this case, I don’t fully disagree. However, I must also point out that what you say in this post sounds eerily similar to the (then-liberal) criticisms of abolitionist activists during the days of slavery. I don’t condone violence, but when we look at it in retrospect as (albeit the extreme end of) a movment attempting to prevent the suffering of those we now recognize as undeserving of the suffering inflicted upon them, we tend to be a little more understanding of it. I for one hope that some day we will recognize non-human animals as deserving of freedom from the suffering we currently inflict on them.
Maybe it’s not a perfectly happy or safe life, but it’s a life in which the zebra has pretty much been free to do all the things zebras might be expected to enjoy doing, like eating and mating and wandering around in herds.
your arguing for the zebra, and I asked for the argument for the lion.
And the lion kills it as quickly as possible
what about hyenas? I recall one poster who thought hyenas shouldn’t be allowed to eat zebras because they don’t kill them as quickly as lions do.
no kidding.
what about parasites? they cause untold suffering to most large charismatic mammals.
OTOH, last I checked, an air-hammer (if used correctly) kills a cow in less than a second.
they die “happy”
the animal that meat came from probably had a life where it was confined in a space so small it could barely move, possibly deliberately mutilated to prevent it from developing nervous behaviors as a result of stress, and fed food not really appropriate to its digestive system, among other things.
so just to clarify then, you really have no problem with eating meat, so long as the animals are raised in an environment that allows them “freedom to express their natures”.
what if that freedom comes at a large environmental cost?
If it’s cowburger it’s just as likely to have come from free-ranging cattle ranches down in Argentina. Do you know how much environmental damage free range beef production has caused over the last 100 years, especially in this country?
what if there were a hundred times as many lions in any given area as there is now. How would you go about getting them enough zebras to eat?
factory farming?
so… provided we eliminate the obvious obligate carnivorous nature of the lion, what’s the difference between a lion and human then, other than the way the food animals are obtained and raised?
I take it your answer would essentially be “none”.
Is that right?
“I’m not going to say we shouldn’t eat meat at all, but I do think we should make sure we aren’t being incredibly brutal about the process of rearing the animals we intend to eat.”
For most people, it’s more important to be able to stuff succulent, tasty morsels of dead animal down their pie holes than to do the right thing. The most enlightened atheist becomes a complete moron when it comes to satisfying his or her taste buds.
Nothing you or I can say or do will ever wake them up.
That’s the way it is on this bitch of an earth.
Sam (#142) wrote: “However when there is a tangible benefit to be gained from experiments on mice, the onus of objective evidence is on you.”
You have it backward re onus: when an animal exhibits the behavior humans do when subjected to pain, such as screaming and trying to escape the source of the stimulus, and when an animal’s brain produces endorphins when subjected to such a stimulus, as a human brain would, the animal necessarily must be given the benefit of the doubt. The onus of objective evidence is on the person who would deny that the animal is in pain.
This is not in itself an argument against animal research. It simply reinforces the importance of establishing that the given research is truly necessary, that there is no feasible alternative. And, of course, the closer the animal is to us either in lineage or in complexity or both, the higher the standard of necessity must be.
Great comments, Anne Nonymous: clear and thoughtful in a way that’s rare here.
And, of course, the closer the animal is to us either in lineage or in complexity or both, the higher the standard of necessity must be.
sorry, that doesn’t follow.
explain your logic here.
No argument there. But that goes beyond the simple challenge of justifying the eating of meat, no? There are those that believe eating meat is wrong under any circumstances; the challenge was framed as if the default lifestyle was that of the vegan, and deviation from that lifestyle needed some rational support. I think that position itself requires justification.
(And I think eating soy requires just as much justification as eating some kinds of meat, at the very least. Some kinds of molluscs for example, like clams…)
True Bob @ #19:
I don’t get ice cream headaches either. I was surprised when I first learned this was a common phenomenon.
As is pointless semantic takings and stretching of well understood terms. Just because I’m sick and tired of the “what is a terrorist” argument, here is the FBI’s definition, so please stop splitting hairs:
@Escuerd
Re: ice cream headache
The correct clinical term is “brain freeze”, and the primary vector is actually the “slurpee”, rather than ice cream. You also can get it from a frozen margarita, but generally only if you drink through a straw (and what’s the point of the salt, then?).
Actually, it was clear you were being the douche bag. You were wrong because you decided to be an above-the-fray Cassandra. “Oh beware the bogeyman of the word ‘terrorism.'”
You were called. You acted like an ass. You compounded.
Honestly, get over yourself. You’re just wrong and playing semantic games to win points.
Always. Always. Always my ass. There’s a big fucking fallacy. There is NO ALWAYS.
Blah blah blah blah… I could heat my house for weeks with the hot air here.
1. Eat the meat.
2. Do the research.
3. Hunt within your limit.
4. Be kind to your pets.
5. Help the endangered.
Anything else is piffle and ideology.
Man this thread has really made me want to smoke a couple boston butts and a brisket this weekend and maybe cure some bacon.
re: #152. I don’t think it’s controversial that animals detect and respond to noxious stimuli the same way we do, the question is do they have the phenomenal, consciousness-requiring experience of pain. I would say they probably do to some extent, depending on the animal, probably correlated to the degree to which they are conscious (that’s right, I’m one of those that think consciousness is a matter of degrees). It is also coherent to think that phenomenal pain requires complex human-like consciousness–a mind or metareprentations system that allows you to evaluate your own experiences. I think most mammals have something like this (again, degrees), but animals without a significant cortex do not. A nematode 1mm long with 302 neurons will avoid being poked–there is no way it “feels pain.”
I am certainly against the infliction of pain for its own sake, and for ends that I consider frivolous (cosmetics, cheap meat, fur). I think as a society would should be able to come to a reasonable agreement on where “frivolous” begins, and this is an important debate. I don’t consider my brother’s asthma medicine, my mother’s chemotherapy, or my own curiousity about how the brain works frivolous. I happen to work on zebrafish and nematodes, and would probably choose not to work on mammals.
Animal rights activists who argue that biomedical research is possible without sacrificing animals are either ignorant or lying. Those who argue that we don’t have the right to use animals for anything, and we should just live with the diseases that can only be cured or treated aided with animal research are at least intellectually honest, though in my opinion moral hypocrites and sociopaths in their willingness to tolerate the horrific human suffering that is alleviated by the fruits of animal research–that or just sad poseurs trying to impress undergraduates.
I will say, as a biologist, that there is waste, unnecessary suffering, and frivolity in some animal research: some of it is poorly conceived, shoddily executed, and of limited potential benefit. The scientific community spends a huge amount of effort trying to minimize this, but could absolutely be doing a better job.
My main question is this: if your goal is a net reduction in global animal suffering, why on earth would you target academic research, a tiny and relatively innocuous sliver of what’s out there, and the one with the only reasonable claim to societal benefit? I mean, puppy mills, disgusting meat farms, etc etc. I think it’s mostly laziness and cowardice.
Hey, lots of Santa Cruz people here. We should get together at Lulu’s (caffeine remains my drug of choice) sometime.
Ichthyic (#153): I simply mean that bonobos and chimps, for example, have social structures and relationships similar to ours (though not as complex), are sufficiently self-aware to identify themselves in mirrors, and behaviorally demonstrate emotions much like ours (Frans de Waal has written some excellent books about this), all of which suggests they are more likely than mice, say, to share some of the emotional suffering that we as humans connect with pain.
Again, it’s a matter of extending the benefit of the doubt. When animals are similar to us in so many ways and so closely related, it seems a matter of logic to take their interests into account even more than we might those of a mouse.
Unless you want to assume that any animal, simply by not being human, has no interests vis-á-vis human interests whatsoever, in which case we would be out of the realm of logic and into that of faith, and I would have to concede I have no satisfactory answer for you.
miko (#162): I agree with you. I just think that the onus of objective evidence is on those who deny that animals experience pain.
Anything else is piffle and ideology.
unfortunately, apparently many are willing to terrorize others for that piffle and ideology.
whether it be some self-projected notion of animal rights, or just a frackin’ cracker.
It’s worthwhile to tear down the ideologies and piffles that end up leading some to conclude terrorism or murder is a warranted response, don’t you think?
My main question is this: if your goal is a net reduction in global animal suffering, why on earth would you target academic research
frankly the answer is quite simple:
research labs are easy targets.
-localized
-not usually guarded
-most people haven’t got a clue what goes on in them, so you can lie to your heart’s content.
basically, that’s pretty much what I got from talking to various animal rights protesters over the years:
convenient target that provides good return on investment.
they don’t care about the realities, it simply doesn’t occur to them that they might be harming their stated long term goal of animal protection.
Caveat @ 111: Wow! For real? The PETA goons actually outright killed the animals they “liberated”?
Equating holocaust victims with lab mice = fail.
Yup, which is why that person is now in my killfile.
Which, would be, whitedevil, Ichythyic and jj.
And jj, the tree sitters have a clue. They know perfectly well that if they actually protested where the trees were being cut down, they would have made a considerably smaller splash than by being in the middle of campus and smashing the new life sciences building. Why actually try and save trees when you can make a scene?
Come on, can’t anyone think of a way to work abortion into this discussion?
It seems to me we have these two horizons that race away from a point where we apply human rights. One moves away along a line of species, and the other moves away along a line of development. What principals can be drawn from these two controversial perspectives on life and rights?
Again, it’s a matter of extending the benefit of the doubt. When animals are similar to us in so many ways and so closely related, it seems a matter of logic to take their interests into account even more than we might those of a mouse.
and i look at it as merely taking into account that there are differences between mice and primates, as there are between mice and fish, and we don’t project our needs onto them, but learn their needs directly through observation as best we can.
I think you assume too much when you use “benefit of the doubt”.
When animals are similar to us in so many ways and so closely related, it seems a matter of logic to take their interests into account even more than we might those of a mouse.
but needs and interests are not the same thing. If I look at the anatomy of any given mammal, I can conclude that the similarities to my own mean it needs things like food and water.
However, what I’m arguing against is when this boils down to people trying to apply RIGHTS to another species. that takes the whole issue of similarity and turns it on its head.
sure, it’s easy enough to deduce what the requirements for basic needs might be when we look at comparative anatomies, but really that’s about as far as it goes.
to stretch it a bit beyond basic needs, hell, I can’t even assume I know the wants and needs of a human living in a different society than my own, let alone what an entirely different species needs.
Would you take the zebra’s desires into account vs. the lion’s? They’re both mammals, after all. What about a pelican vs. a fish?
I suppose I’m just trying to get you to not anthropomorphize too much when you think about this stuff.
Let me state more clearly: the problem is not that most humans fail to understand the differences amongst non-human animals, it’s that they draw a larger distinction than is perhaps strictly warranted by the facts between humans and non-humans.
I do not find this argument to very convincing. In fact, to the contrary, it seems humans very commonly do exactly the opposite.
Observe most pet owners and the way they talk to their pets and otherwise relate to them. What about all the people that find an injured bird or small mammal in the wild and attempt to rescue it?
The human world of civilization and ethics, in which the reduction of suffering is important, does not extend beyond the experience of humans. We relate to and empathize with animals in the way we do because it is simply impossible for most of us to grok that something that it is to be a squirrel, or cat, zebrafish or chimpanzee. The point is that our empathy for animals has a lot more to do with US than it does with them.
Okay, that said, I love animals and empathize with them, and I do believe that avoiding unnecessary cruelty is extremely important. I don’t understand how a squirrel experiences pain, but I have wished more than once to end the suffering of a squirrel fatally struck by a car but still thrashing around in its death throes. I just don’t think that our problem is a lack of appreciation of the similarities between animals and humans. In fact, I think that we don’t adequately appreciate the extent to which our empathy is projection – which doesn’t make it unimportant, it just means it’s important TO US.
Remember the lion and the zebra? The killing of the zebra is not ‘right’ because of environmental or situational factors that WE might consider important, like the zebra living in its natural habitat, or the lion killing the zebra quickly. It’s not ‘wrong,’ either. There is no moral value whatsoever attached to the eating of zebras by lions, because humans are not involved. It’s really that simple. The lion does not care, and has no reason to care, about the suffering of its meal. Animals kill, eat, and otherwise inflict enormous amounts of suffering upon each other, and that’s just how life works. The lion eats the zebra because a lion needs food to survive.
The important difference between us and the lion is that we have the capacity to recognize suffering and other beings, and the wish to reduce it. This is a GOOD THING (it being a critical part of what makes us, well, human), but to some extent we should remember the lion. I mean, dammit, it just makes a LOT MORE SENSE to concern ourselves principally with the happiness and quality of life of beings who appreciate and reciprocate those values: our fellow humans. Improving human life is mission #1. If animal research will help in that mission (and it does, enormously) and we can conduct it ethically, with a minimum of animal suffering, I am 100% on board.
agree with ichthyic that “rights” are not inherent, or, to use more semiotically-charged language, inalienable. i agree with lots of animal rights, but we have to be aware that this is something we’re giving them, not something they already have. the enlightenment is over, everyone knows humanity is just making stuff up as it goes.
as for “terrorists”… bleh. these guys would love to be called terrorists. maybe it’s a term that once had a useful denotative purpose, but i agree with others that this usage is no a fart in a shitstorm of ideology and jingoism. this is just a law enforcement problem.
The point is that our empathy for animals has a lot more to do with US than it does with them.
*bing*
There is no moral value whatsoever attached to the eating of zebras by lions, because humans are not involved. It’s really that simple. The lion does not care, and has no reason to care, about the suffering of its meal.
*sighs with relief*
exactly.
There is no shared empathy, regardless of shared anatomy and/or physiology.
There is only projected empathy on our part.
This is the primary reason why, IMO, even the concept of extending rights developed based on interactions with other humans onto another species makes absolutely no sense.
Jams, well you bring up an excellent point. So, those of you who have spoken up in defense of animal rights, where do you fall along the lines of the abortion debate? Do you feel that we should consider a fetus human once it is capable of experiencing pain? Do you state that fetuses have rights unto themselves, but the rights of the mother overrides them?
@Miko, ok. So why should we grant non-humans rights at all?
@Ichthyic
Makes no sense? Does having empathy with the animals in the first place make any sense? Should we suppress that emotion as irrational?
I wonder how much of the notion of extended empathy comes from the xian stories many of us were told as children about the garden of eden?
lions lying with lambs and all…
trex eating coconuts…
*snicker*
This is not a case where arguing the political / propaganda nuances of the term ‘terrorist’ is even remotely on point.
As for people who think that research using animals is always immoral or whatever it is that is swirling in your brains… You do realize that ecologists very often use lab animals, and even worse (gasp!) capture and *torture* peace-loving wild animals in nets and cages, shove them into bags, cut them or poke them to get blood, and sometimes even rip out bits of their fur! Those evil ecologists must care nothing about those species to treat them so horribly. snark
A quick story about a researcher in the much maligned field of primate neurology (yeah, one of the people who really does dissect the brains of monkeys and apes), who happened to be my vertebrate evolution / anatomy prof.
During class, he brought down a very very cute pygmy lemur from his lab, mostly just for fun since we were discussing the primate visual cortex (his primary research topic). No cage, just an open cardboard box with a little blanket inside… the lemur mostly slept or climbed around on the prof or a nearby student during class. (BTW: The prof often brought his dog to class and occasionally would point out some physiological feature or another with the dog standing patiently there as a model… very amusing.)
Anyways, at the end of class, the prof mentioned that his lab had two pygmy lemurs, but the other one contracted terminal cancer… So they mapped portions of the visual cortex in very high detail before it died. That involves selectively probing and destroying bits of a live animal’s brain. That is where the majority of the data we had been discussing in class actually came from. No, the brain does not have pain receptors, but I can’t imagine the process is really enjoyable. Anyway, there was nothing casual about the level of care and compassion this guy felt for his charges. And when we finally get direct neural implants to restore vision to blind people, that pygmy lemur will have played a significant role.
PS: Just in case you don’t know, the visual cortex of primate brains is quite different from other mammals. Figuring out how human vision works really does require studying primates.
Should we suppress that emotion as irrational?
emotions are neither rational nor irrational.
applying them to improper situations is where the question of rationality lies.
have you clubbed a baby seal today?
Does having empathy with the animals in the first place make any sense?
yes, actually, for exactly the reason i just spelled out earlier:
projection.
it makes perfect sense for humans as a social animal to have evolved a sense of empathy.
it’s understandable that humans, without giving much thought, would tend to project that empathy on to other things.
you do understand what anthropomorphism is, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphic
So what’s all this talk about lions killing zebras quickly?
The gritty truth
On the upside, the lions looked quite happy.
Ichthyic (#170): I’m pretty much in agreement with you, though I think your distinction between needs and interests is murky. If an animal needs food and water it surely has an interest in obtaining them. And surely animals have an interest in avoiding (or a need to avoid, if you prefer) pain and suffering as much as possible. Extending the benefit of the doubt is to assume very little.
Like I said above (#152 and #164) my point had to do with where the onus of objective evidence lies. And, like I said, the fact that animals experience pain “is not in itself an argument against animal research.”
Whether animals have “rights” is clearly problematical. Indeed, whether human beings have “rights” is problematical, given that “human rights” can be so easily taken away. Much hinges on how you define “rights,” no?
I certainly agree about not anthropomorphizing too much. On the other hand, I hope you can see that there is a world of difference between Clever Hans and simply recognizing that other animals experience pain.
Anyway, I’ve got to go. Be interesting to see if this is still going on tomorrow evening.
>>have you clubbed a baby seal today?
Yes actually. That’s a story for later.
>>you do understand what anthropomorphism is, right?
Yes Ichthyic, I am well aware of the word, you’re losing points for rhetoric there. You’re dodging the question, which I will spell out for you.
Given that people have empathy for animals (which you acknowledge), they will therefore assign value to the well-being of animals.
Your initial claim that it makes no sense to give animals rights is false. We have an interest in having animals well treated because we are uncomfortable with them being mistreatment. Thus we are willing to enshrine in law the good treatment of animals.
So, how much value should be applied to the lives and well being of animals? How much do we want our empathy towards animals to be enforcebale by law? How much of your answer can be applied to humans, and why should humans have rights?
If you would prefer to simply mock the questions (or me) rather than answer them, I’ll take off.
It seems that some of the researchers are making points which answer the other side’s wants: such as the fact that we need to use the least ‘sentient’ (not my word choice IACUC’s word choice) species in our design. Nobody will be allowed to use chimps, when they can do the study on mice.
If you are really interested in how a researcher has to set up their experiment, what rules and guidelines they have to follow, and get approved by an animal welfare board, please go here. I think most people who aren’t involved in the sciences would be suprised at how many common-sense ethical considerations are already in place.
Makes no sense? Does having empathy with the animals in the first place make any sense? Should we suppress that emotion as irrational?
No one arguing for animal research has so much as suggested that we should suppress our empathy and sense of ethics in the name of animal research. The fact is, we’re dealing with a couple of ethical issues, here. The first, how can we gain information and experience that will help us to improve the quality of life. The second, how can we do so while inflicting a minimum of pain and suffering upon experimental subjects.
In the first, compassion for humans. In the second, compassion for other animals. The first, being between beings that share that sense of empathy, compassion and ethics, is a lot more meaningful than the second, which is not a shared experience at all. Saving a future cancer patient, for example, has meaning to those doing the work that ultimately cures the patient and to the patient him or herself. The suffering of a lab animal in pursuit of the knowledge we need to save that life – which we must alleviate to the greatest possible extent! – has no meaning to that animal. We really need to be most concerned with human experiences.
Hmmm… I guess links don’t work. Well copy and paste this: https://www.aalaslearninglibrary.org/demo/course1.asp?strKeyID=A7E4E2D8-F91D-4E33-BE41-8BD5971656B8-381778&Library=10&Track=11&Series=20&Course=33
Or look up IACUC Animal Care and Use Courses.
Why should we minimize pain towards animals grolby?
Your initial claim that it makes no sense to give animals rights is false.
Wrong. “Animal rights” is a philosophical absurdity. Animals lack any capacity to understand or care about the concept of “rights.” There is no reason to believe that animals care about their treatment as such, which is actually a pretty abstract concept. Animals have no interest in the whys or hows of their experience, they simply must live it, be it pain, pleasure, hunger or satiation.
I believe, like most normal people, that hurting animals without a good reason is WRONG, but it is NOT because of anything intrinsic to the animal. Ethics, empathy and compassion are strictly human experiences and concepts. To say that animals have rights is to say nothing about animals whatsoever. That means that the idea doesn’t have any philosophical merit, and I have no interest in such ideas. By all means, be kind to animals. But rights? Silliness.
To be clearer, why should we institute at a legal level, rather than individual conscience, the principle that pain towards animals should be minimized?
Your initial claim that it makes no sense to give animals rights is false.
you are conflating understanding with logic.
I understand why people anthropomorphize, like I understand why empathy itself would evolve in a social species.
that doesn’t make it logical or rational to extend that empathy to another species.
so, while I can understand the mechanisms that cause people to do this, that doesn’t make it logical or sensical.
clearer?
you’re being particularly obtuse here.
Read the tennants of the ALF before you post on something you don’t understand.
How many lives have been lost to the ALF/ELF?
Zero.
You don’t know terrorism. Terrorism is when a whole system depends on the exploitation of life. All social change has come from direct action, not one instance can be found where that is not the case.
Animal testing is a joke in the medical world (where the supposed benefits to humanity are). Results are rarely accurate or useful. The whole thing is just an industrial complex.
To people who sew up primate eyes to test for sensory deprivation, you’re sickening.
XVX for life, R.A.S.H. ’til death.
Why should we minimize pain towards animals grolby?
Because we don’t want them to suffer needlessly. What’s so challenging about that? I mean, you don’t, right?
Grolby, Ichthyic (I could be wrong) was going with the point of view that rights are not intrinsic at _all_ (see miko’s comment above). One way of interpreting this is to say “Animal Rights” means granting rights to animals through legal and social institutions.
Thus, animal rights is simply saying:
Were going to make it illegal to abuse animals.
Are you arguing that rights are an intrinsic property of being Human?
@grolby See my above comment about clubbing baby seals. They’re so CUUTE when their brains are spilling out.
@Ichthyic
I am not conflating understanding with sense making. My apologies if I misunderstood your position.
Well, I’m afraid I must retire. Good luck to everyone. Those at SC, Toss an @gmail.com to my name if you want to go to lulu’s sometime.
Michael Glenn.
To be clear, my point is practical one, and I think in very practical terms. Humans will generally operate on their own self-interest, thus to improve the welfare of animals, the motivation will come from empathy or compassion. Thus you must provide the evidence for enough humans to feel empathy and compassion such that they bring about better conditions for animals. This is why the onus of evidence is on your side, and presumably why despite claiming it was not, you cited what you believe is enough evidence to support compassion for mice.
However, the similarities you mention are not the core of my concern. I am interested in the conscious context of the pain, in the qualia, which based upon observation of mice, I very much doubt is anything remotely similar, if existent, to human experience. Until it is demonstrated that mice have such experiences, supposing they even do, those like me will remain unconvinced and animal welfare will not improve.
As mentioned, this argument bears similarity to the abortion issue. Once again, I am not convinced, at all, that an early human embryo possibly has anything remotely resembling the sort of experiences I feel and value, and thus I lack the empathy to try and prevent harm to embryos given the known and real benefit to developed humans that I do empathize and feel compassion for.
I do not care for whatever empathy (effectively imagination) you may have, I require evidence for my own empathy.
Are you arguing that rights are an intrinsic property of being Human?
Only in the sense that they have meaning to us as a philosophical concept, and a useful one at that. Because these ideas have meaning to us, it makes a lot more sense to talk about rights as something that applies to humans than it does to apply them to other animals.
But are rights an intrinsic property of humans? My first impulse to say, no, I wouldn’t say so. Rights are an idea, and ideas are not physical things. Rights are a pretty recent invention, and before they were invented, no one had them.
To be clearer, why should we institute at a legal level, rather than individual conscience, the principle that pain towards animals should be minimized?
property rights of humans, plain and simple. I’d rather not have someone beat my dog to a bloody pulp on a whim. The law protects my rights to my own property.
extend that to:
shared public property. Consequences in place to deter someone destroying shared property (entire ecosystems, animals in preserves or national parks, etc.). This covers instances of say, deciding to hunt a species in a given area, which has impacts on the entire ecosystem. Which, btw, is why most states have things like hunting/fishing permits.
beyond that?
we shouldn’t.
each person should decide on their own what level of “respect” they choose to engender to other species, the law shouldn’t be involved in legislating “proper attitudes”.
If I want to be nice to a baby seal one day, just on a lark, I’d like to be able to do that without it being legislated.
likewise, I wouldn’t want kids to be thrown in jail because they threw a frog against the wall one day on a lark, either.
…and I sure as hell don’t want some complete ignorant fuck telling me how I can and can’t do my research, so long as I am not violating any public or private property rights.
Rights are a pretty recent invention, and before they were invented, no one had them.
you’re dead on here, and if one studies the history of the development of the concept of “rights” in human society, it should become really clear that it simply would make no sense to apply those same concepts outside of a given society, let alone to another species.
different countries have completely different sets of rights.
it’s easy to look this up and see.
if there are such vast differences in the perceptions of rights between modern human societies, how ridiculous it becomes to try and extend these concepts beyond humans.
Are you arguing that rights are an intrinsic property of being Human?
This should be interesting . . .
I don’t have a dog in this fight but in skimming the comments I did happen to cock an eyebrow at “animals don’t have intrinsic rights!” assertion above.
OR, . . . “how ridiculous it becomes to try and extend these concepts beyond
humanspropertied white Protestant Christian men.”Your moral logic. Look into it.
@archgoon: “So why should we grant non-humans rights at all?”
Because it makes us feel good. I feel the same way about conservation. Species have no intrinsic “value”–life will continue to evolve and persist on this planet in a dizzying spectrum of beauty and intricacy without us. Conservation and environmentalism is about saving OUR lives–the ecosystem on earth that favors human life.
I think forming social bonds with animals is (and has been) adaptive for humans. Pets are a cultural universal–even if, or maybe because, they usually get eaten in the end. I also think culturally we are on a trajectory that has extended our sphere of empathy to include first other humans, and then other animals closely related to us, etc, etc. I think that’s great and we are “improved” (in my subjective estimation) for it. However, I have no hesitation in doing moral calculus regarding an animal’s well-being and that of humans.
I don’t think humans or animals have “rights” or “value” in any intrinsic sense. These are not necessarily “human only” concepts, but they are created by behavior and cognition. Animals “value” things to the extent that they are motivated to seek them out, for example. Clearly, all animals are adapted to “value” there own preservation.
Your moral logic. Look into it.
bullshit.
your basic logic: you’re doing it wrong.
Rights are a pretty recent invention, and before they were invented, no one had them
Closer. Rights are that which we as a society agree upon are a good idea to protect.
Thomas said it pretty well in the language of his time:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”
While I am not a vegan I do not mock those who choose this lifestyle, for I cannot argue against the proposition that to cause unnecessary pain in this world is a crime (of some sort) against it.
If the blurb on the back of Chipotle cups is correct, bioethics is something of a new field.
One would hope, or at least not be surprised, to see the humanity of future generations treat the world and its intelligent creatures with more compassion than we are now.
Your moral logic. Look into it.
bullshit.
your basic logic: you’re doing it wrong.
When the aliens come I hope they drop you first into their bioassay tanks.
That would be, shall we say, karmic.
:|>
Troy, you said: “Rights are that which we as a society agree upon are a good idea to protect.”
So then what’s wrong with saying animals have no “intrinsic rights”? If the rights are depending on societal norms, which vary across time and space, then clearly they aren’t intrinsic or inherent or inalienable.
ichthyic said: “..and I sure as hell don’t want some complete ignorant fuck telling me how I can and can’t do my research, so long as I am not violating any public or private property rights.”
You’re starting to sound like a home-schooler or survivalist. Clearly, society has an interest in regulating the behavior of others–mostly through subtle coercsion but also through fancy things like legislation. As a animal researcher, I’m open to a discussion on who can do what to which animals for what purpose.
Of course, once you start fire bombing houses, you lose your place at this table.
First the cracker trolls, now the *pretend I care about animals* trolls. *sigh*
These people do not give a flying fuck about the *poor little animals*. They are violent people looking for a self-righteous excuse to be violent.
Most animal rights activists do not terrorize and attempt to murder people. I refuse to call these idiots animal rights activists. They are violent terrorists, period. That’s all they are. If they weren’t blowing people up for lab rats, they’d be blowing them up for crumbling crackers, driving SUV’s, their skin color, or something else. Whether it’s a cracker or a pretense of concern for animals or *fill in the blank*, it’s all the same shit. It’s hateful, violent people looking for some *cause* get violent about.
Closer. Rights are that which we as a society agree upon are a good idea to protect.
which is just restating exactly what he said.
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
do you really believe that was the case, though?
How long did it take for the rights that were originally listed to be recognized in any given society?
how many rights were later added in the bill of rights after the original constitution was published?
have you looked at other nations constitutions?
do they share the same list of rights as this one?
no, they don’t.
get it?
While I am not a vegan I do not mock those who choose this lifestyle
was someone here mocking vegans?
I rather think you’re missing the point, as your statement here has NOTHING to do with the issue of rights to begin with.
It’s not whether a vegan can choose their own lifestyle, but whether their decisions should be legally reflected in the assignment of “rights”.
I cannot argue against the proposition that to cause unnecessary pain in this world is a crime (of some sort) against it.
why not? what prevents you from arguing against an untenable position?
even you realize “(of some sort)” that your concept of “crime” in this case is vague at best.
seems like it would be quite easy to argue against. Do you find yourself not up to the task?
If the blurb on the back of Chipotle cups is correct, bioethics is something of a new field.
you need to stop getting your information from salsa cups.
bioethics goes all the way back to the greeks and beyond.
One would hope, or at least not be surprised, to see the humanity of future generations treat the world and its intelligent creatures with more compassion than we are now.
I’d rather settle on treating them with knowledge of what they are and how they interact, frankly.
misplaced empathy can be just as damaging as unchecked hunting.
go ask your local deer population.
….btw, I think you rather missed the last part of your famous quote:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men“
As a animal researcher, I’m open to a discussion on who can do what to which animals for what purpose.
then you have never had to sit through the formation of an animal use committee.
when you do, come back and tell me how open to discussion you are.
Icthyic, there’s no argument for the lion. The lion is, as far as any evidence we have suggests, not a creature with a capacity for giving a shit about the zebra, so talking about what the lion “should” or “shouldn’t” do is meaningless. We can only talk about what we should or shouldn’t do for the zebras given the existence of lions.
And what we should do is take into account that there are a number of creatures involved in the predator-prey transactions you mention, all of which have interests worthy of consideration (except the parasites, which hardly have enough in the way of nervous systems to count as having interests). The zebras, the lions, and the hyenas all have interests in living and eating and breeding and having a reasonably suitable environment and so forth, as well as avoiding overpopulation and disease. It would seem to me that our responsibility to such animals would be along the lines of ensuring that we don’t pollute their environment or narrow their range to the degree that it’s impossible for them to live, or cause too large of a population imbalance in any direction so that one group ends up starving for lack of food, or etc. I doubt we have the resources to prevent all wild animals from getting parasites (nor would we be able to do so without causing unacceptable levels of stress to the animals, most likely), but we might take steps to stop the spread of the worst parasites, which might include mercy-killing of infected creatures.
As far as deciding on a large scale whether the hyenas or the lions or the zebras overall have the greatest right to live, it’s not clear to me that it’s possible for us to differentiate things clearly enough in that realm that we should be trying to make this decision. It’s probably a hell of a lot more sensible just to step back and say, “Well, provided a reasonably stable environment, each individual at least gets a chance of having as decent a run of things as anyone can expect, and there’s just not that much we can sanely do beyond that.”
One might alternately make the argument that the hyenas and the lions both are in some sense “smarter” than the zebras, and so have more in the way of interests. One might also argue that even the hyenas, no matter what their killing procedure, are not brutalizing an individual zebra for most of its life, so that even a pretty nasty hyena kill is still not as bad as a CAFO (nor does it operate on the same scale).
As far as whether factory farming is more environmentally sound than free-range grazing, well, have you read The Omnivore’s Dilemma? I’d say Michael Pollan makes a pretty decent case in there that factory farming is a pretty damn poor idea even if we ignore the welfare of its subjects. The choice for humans is not actually between hideous environmental devastation and brutal factory farming, it’s between devastating our environment and our ethics both so that we can produce food in an inefficient fashion or switching to more sustainable and more ethical diets which rely more heavily on vegetable protein. And there’s a case made in Pollan’s book for what seems to be a reasonably sound method for producing meat in a more humane and sustainable fashion than either the Argentinean free range methods or the American CAFOs, if you’d like to argue that we need to continue eating meat for some reason.
*sigh* Unsurprisingly, in the three hours since I started composing my comment, wandered off to do something, and came back to post it many many things have happened which caused the relevant antecedent to become lost in the mists of time. Oh well.
So then what’s wrong with saying animals have no “intrinsic rights”? If the rights are depending on societal norms, which vary across time and space, then clearly they aren’t intrinsic or inherent or inalienable.
Absolutely nothing; but by the same moral logic humans have no inherent rights either.
In the Libetarian Utopia you get all the rights and liberties you can afford, and not one drop more. In more advanced societies, like ours, we have instituted a democratically-elected consitutional republic with theoretically independent legislative, judiciary, and executive branches to both define and enforce exactly where my rights and liberties end and yours begin.
Let’s not forget that chattel human slavery was enshrined in our own Constitution until 1865.
The beginning and end of moral wisdom is do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Ichthyic,
With regard to comment #153. Do you really believe that animals closely related to humans are no more entitled to protection than animals further removed?
Do you believe I have rights? Does my mother have rights? Do (or rather did) my grandfathers have rights? Did my great-grand mothers have rights?
If I keep extending this line of questioning, and if we agree that life on earth has diversified from a common ancestor, then eventually some of these ancestors will have been members of the species homo erectus (or possibly a related species). Would these individuals have no rights at all, since they are not homo sapiens? Would they be entitled to no ethical consideration?
If the human capacity for intelligence, or sentience, or whatever other human capacity endows us with rights, was our immediate ancestor so much less intelligent as to have no rights at all? Was there a completely abrupt transition?
If they can make fires and plan events months in advance and communicate with a spoken language, and if different communities speak different languages, and if individuals can learn multiple languages, but none of them can can correctly use the past progressive tense, would it then be okay for hypothetical homo sapiens time travelers to blow them away with shotguns as a sport?
We are very distantly related to flowering plants. I think it is okay to pick a flower and use it to decorate a dinner table. If in some remote corner of the world a living population of Neandertals is discovered, do you really think it would be appropriate to cut off or out the reproductive organs from a living individual, without anesthesia, because you think it would make an attractive addition to your dining room coffee table?
Off course, if there were, say, a living homo erectus, it would almost certainly not be as intelligent as modern human beings, and I suspect it would be perfectly sensible to ignore them when recruiting the next class of med. students. But if any human capacity or property bestows dignity on humanity, then the similar capacity that our immediate ancestor would have had would bestow some similar, but perhaps lessor degree, of responsibility, dignity, and rights on them. And, to increasingly lessor degree, that would extend to the living apes more so than to nematodes.
(Also, depending on what property one believes give humans there moral standing, then it is possible that other animals, even though relatively removed from us genetically, might still deserve to have its individuality respected too some degree. I clearly consider that it is some aspect of mental capacity that does this, and so it is possible that other animals, such as dolphins or octopi, might merit more protection then their relationship alone would indicate.)
Or are you a creationist who believes that there is no relationship between humans and animals? Or do you believe that human rights do not derive from intelligence, or sentience, or any property of humans based in physical reality, but rather from some supernatural source?
The logic of your opposition to anthropomorphism is much more solidly based in the myths of the sky fairy than in science.
In reference to the original topic of the post, I will point out that the moral dignity of a chimpanzee is not a good reason to ignore the moral dignity (which is with an all but philosophical certainly greater) of a human being.
Bullshit, grolby. Recent research has been showing that most (warmblooded) social species have some notions of correct social behavior (ethics), and primates and dolphins have certainly shown a buttload of evidence for empathy and compassion. There’s even the occasional oddball interspecies adoption that suggests that animals other than humans are capable of some level of intraspecific empathy under some circumstances.
This statement of yours is the kind of thing I had in mind when I referred above to people being too willing to draw sharp lines between human and non-human creatures. You want to separate out some one thing and say, “this is the thing that makes humans special and it’s why we get to do what we want,” but there’s really no one thing that makes us special. The big difference is, whatever makes social animals social, we’ve got more of it, to the degree that we can make planet-spanning high-tech civilizations and have this kind of argument. But it doesn’t seem that anybody’s ever been able to really find a difference in type between us and the other animals and make that difference stick. Just differences in degree.
Boltzmann’s elf, I think that’s a very good argument. I’ve tended to make it in the reverse direction (to help explain to “only humans have souls and they’re implanted at conception” style anti-choicers why I would value, say, an adult cat over a human embryo), but it works very nicely in this direction too.
And, by the by, to whomever was trolling up there for our views on reproductive choice, I’d like to note that interests-based reasoning makes pro-choice logic perfectly consistent with defense of the interests of non-human animals — a human fetus (or a brain-dead human) has few or no interests, various non-human animals might have some intermediate amounts of interests, depending on their capacities, and a born human has the most complex assemblage of interests of any of them.
So I can say that CAFO animals should be defended from brutal treatment because their interest in not being tortured overrides our interest in deliciousness, and at the same time argue that a woman has the right not to be forced to serve as host to a dangerous and non- or marginally-sentient parasite for nine months, provided she has it killed as humanely as possible. So I hope that answers that.
Ugh.
My own personal approach to pro-AR activism : follow my vegan lifestyle. Explain myself if anyone asks me why I’ve chosen my opinions. Support others making the same decision as I, and co-exist peacefully with the vast majority of my friends and acquaintances that would never do so. In short, be a positive example.
Nary a hint of “HARMING NON-HUMAN ANIMALS IS WRONGZ!!1!!1! LET’Z HARM SOME HUMAN ANIMALS!!!1!!!ELEVENTYONE!”
Just… ugh.
ichthyic said: “then you have never had to sit through the formation of an animal use committee.”
yes, i have. and i’ve had ignorant people tell me ridiculous things about how to be nice to lab fish on a regular basis.
you’re being willfully obtuse. because it’s being done wrong doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. look at the fucking u.s. government. is your solution living in a shack in montana with a pile of guns? or try to do better with representative democracy?
“Ethics, empathy and compassion are strictly human experiences and concepts.”
This is not true. Read.
When I go into town on a Saturday (don’t worry there are malls at either end of the High Street), the animal rights people will have a stall. it will be replete with pictures of cats in stereotactic aparatuses with their eyes wide open. In fact most of the pictures of animals being experimented on will have their eyes open.
This relies on the general public not being aware that you can be in a surgical plane of anaesthesia such that your guts could be being manhandled and you wont’ flinch with your eyes apparently staring at the ceiling. Routinely patient’s eyes are taped shut during ops, not just because it is disconcerting, but to stop the eyeball drying out. The blink reflex being absent is one good indication that you are in a surgical plane.
Then there is the fact that many horrific looking experiments are not survival, the animal in question goes to sleep and never wakes up. If they need to wake up again, you have drip saline on the eyes periodically. It is all seriously dishonest.
However here in the UK in response to problems Cambridge has had building a new Neuroscience Centre we have a pro-science protest group, called ProTest. it was started by a schoolboy in Cambridge disgusted by the animal rights antics.
So when the the antis march, so do the pros.
I’m coming to this debate a little late, but just in case anyone gets to the end of the comments
“Not coincidentally, Euro AR terrorists ramped up the violence far earlier, including an incident in which a journalist had the initials of an AR group carved into his skin.”
This is true, but it’s also true that in the UK where this particular incident (and many others) occurred there has been a sharp decline in animal rights extremist attacks in the past few years. This is partly due to far more effective policing but also because the terror campaigns backfired.
The tide turned in January and February 2006 when the Pro-Test movement http://www.pro-test.org.uk/ was founded and rallied in defence of science, becoming the catalyst for a radical change in the public mood about animal research.
If the same is to happen in the US people will need to rally to the scientists who are being targetted. A good place to start if you want to help is Speaking of Research http://www.speakingofresearch.org/.
Don’t wait for the police or University authorities to act, defend your scientists now!
Ichthyic,
Just for explanation, assuming you come back to this.
They were a mating pair of salvinis, and were in a tank with a Jack Dempsey. Probably not the most restful environment.
@ 141: When you’re making a counter-example, try to use equivalent terms of reference.
My example: choice of non-sentient animal vs sentient animal.
Your example: choice of two sentient animals.
Your example /= my example.
Having scanned the rest of the thread – can someone tell me if there is ever a situation where you would give priority to an animal’s suffering over the suffering of a human being? Because that’s what this comes down to.
If you stop medical experiments (which already, as pointed out repeatedly above, have ethical mechanisms built in to minimise suffering based on species and capacity for pain etc), you are in effect saying to suffering human beings that their suffering is not as important as the suffering of animals.
I’m fairly well convinced that “animal rights” exist in some form. If they didn’t, the question of where in our evolution humans acquired rights seems to require answers that are a bit silly. But here is the perspective that ALL animal rights campaigners need and most seem to lack:
Look at animals in research facilities and look at those on industrial-scale meat farms. Look at the numbers (at least in terms of animals with complex nervous systems, presumably more meaningfully able to suffer). Look at the amount of suffering and look at the relative sizes of the positive outcomes.
How can anyone thing think they need to stop biomedical testing FIRST?
The only explanation I can find is that it’s easier to cast scientists as villains than farmers.
I have to say that, whatever ones opinion on the ethics of animal tests, the answer to your question is “Yes, of course”.
If the human suffering is very slight and the suffering of a non-human animal is sufficiently serious, of course the animal’s suffering takes priority. For an (exaggerated) example if someone had good reason to think that torturing a hundred bonobos for a hundred years would cure one person’s vague feeling of nausea they couldn’t possibly be justified in doing so.
@Anne Nonymous and some others…
Your comment wasn’t lost in time btw, keep up the thoughtful work. Anyway, I think I differ from you slightly when conceptualizing “interests”. I don’t think the concept of interests relies on the subject’s ability to understand those interests, or conceptualize those interests in any way. As an example, consider people who are severely mentally disabled, or people in comas, or people high on PCP or sick with alztimers, or even your average creationist. Their rights don’t wax and wane relative to their intellectual faculty.
Here’s a question: if a human’s brain stops functioning like a human brain, but continues to function as a zebra brain, should our subject still be granted human rights, or should our hypothetical subject lose those rights? What if our subject was born that way? Should we grant zebras rights equivalent to the mentally ill?
I am guessing these guys aren’t religionists either. the problem ain’t religion or belief in god(s), it is about being zealots and an inability to keep ones own perspective in perspective.
I realise how late I am to this party, but I just want to point out how lazy it is to reason that “Once upon a time they likened [oppressed peoples here] to nothing more than animals, so therefore we will one day see how wrong we were to treat non human animals this way.” I’m paraphrasing. But this argument appeared early in the thread.
Using this reasoning, pedohiles could say that we’re restricting their rights, and just as we realised the ban on inter-racial marriage was wrong, so too will we realise that our notions of child protection are wrong.
I’m not for drawing sharp and distinct lines, because I don’t think they exist. But using this kind of rationalisation just doesn’t work.
11 pages? Geez, I wish my animal protocol applications were only 11 pages.
I’m fairly well convinced that “animal rights” exist in some form. If they didn’t, the question of where in our evolution humans acquired rights seems to require answers that are a bit silly.
The solution is actually very simple: there is no such thing as intrinsic or inalienable rights, whether human or animal. Like I said earlier, rights were invented. Before that, no one had any. And yes, I think that they were a powerful, important invention.
As for the evidence some animals have a sense of ethics, or of empathy and compassion, okay. I can be wrong about that. Nonetheless, there is no sense in which they share a human experience of these ideas. Furthermore, I remain unconvinced that a dolphin or chimpanzee is able to make an abstract judgment about its experiences, which I’ve already said is important.
By the way, I’ve never claimed, nor ever would claim, that there is a “sharp and clear” distinction between humans and other animals. Yeah, it’s a matter of degree. The question is, is that matter of degree enough to justify a difference in the way we interact? The answer is a resounding YES. The lion is not superior to the zebra, but it does eat the zebra. Similarly, we are not in any natural sense “superior” to the animals we interact with (though believing as such is our peculiar human prerogative). That doesn’t disqualify our actions.
And for the millionth time, I care about animals and don’t wish to harm them. Personally, I have no wish to participate in research on mammals. I don’t want to deal with it. The thing is, that I can acknowledge that such a feeling is about me. Most animals aren’t going to care that I am hurting them, per se – they’re probably most concerned with escaping pain. For that reason, it IS our job to set the boundaries on what is acceptable in research. Does that make sense?
What a stupid argument. Can you beat your own dog to a pulp on a whim?
Hann @ 189: “Terrorism is when a whole system depends on the exploitation of life.”
Buwahahahahahaha. Here’s a newsflash for you, Hann: YOU CAN’T LIVE on this planet without ending the life of another creature. So if you have a problem with exploiting life, you’d better kill yourself.
This sort of violence is counterproductive and doesn’t work. Among other things it is just stupid.
We saw it with the Earth First ecoterrorists. They were always careful to damage property rather than target people. But in the end, they ended up on top of the FBI lists and were mostly caught, convicted, and sent to prison. No one missed them. Nor did they advance their cause in the least.
I knew an Earth Firster back in the Dark Ages slightly. He was mentally unstable, not bughouse crazy but not too impressive upstairs. Young guy with a couple of kids that he had nothing to do with and didn’t contribute a dime in child support. Because he was living in an old car and unemployed. Probably just a hanger on, no one competent would trust him with confidential information.
Our facility prohibited on site experiments with “companion animals”. That is dogs and cats. This is, BTW, common, many facilities do so these days.
I don’t have a problem with that at all, in fact I agree with it. There is very little that can be done with both species that can’t be done better and cheaper with more typical lab animals.
Some genetic disease models are canine. But these dogs are so expensive and valuable, they get treated like royalty out of self interest if for no other reason.
Bingo!
No more than abortion clinic bombers care about the “sanctity of life.”
There are violent people, and any excuse will do.
Probably a lot of truth to that at least for the violent ones targeting people.
Saw that with the crackergate mob. By my guess, half of those posters and death threaters weren’t even catholics. Some weren’t even serious xians. Quite a few were mentally disturbed trolls looking for something to fill up their days.
As McCluhan pointed out, “the craziness, incoherency, and hate is the message.”
Dude, you have to stand up for your fellow scientists and in addition your fellow atheists, you can’t let a bunch of vegans push you around.
Because this is what’s happening somewhere on 5th Avenue.
Your Eminence, look here, I think we have found a tool to fight against that gadfly PZ.
Well, what is it Mr. Donahue?
Here, a bunch of middle class white boys with dreadlocks firebombed a few cars. And PZ just writes only one Blog post about it. Almost wetting himself.
Is he going to do anything to piss them off?
Nope, he’s scared.
Well, I think we know what to do now. Here, give take the alter boys upstairs and give them a snickers bar and $10. I’m going to give Sean and the boys a call they broke those British sociopaths, maybe we can do the same thing to PZ…
Will PZ defend his brothers after the attack of the Vegans? Will the Catholic Church start to take lessons from trustafarians? Will PZ perform an online vivisection?
Tune in next time on Pharyngula…
“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t relish someone throwing a few wrenches into the works at Tyson or the rest, though. A little sabotage aimed at the worst offenders would be far more forgivable.”
Violence is OK, when you say it’s OK?
“And I’m sure you know, but the violence I’m speaking of is that being inflicted on non-human animals.”
Please. Take their place then.
“and most animal rights activists don’t approve of these firebombers’ behavior.”
Really?
I expect them to vociferously decry every single act like this. I expect them to disown the ALF and SHAC. I expect them to state loudy and clearly that any act like this is immoral and that anyone who commits such acts to be explicitly and thoroughly disowned. I do not expect a kind of passive dismissal like the person up-thread who says that “most AR activists aren’t violent”. I do not expect to see people treating these maniacs like they’re heroes for the cause. And I do not expect to see people trying to use the bullshit logic of “well, since it was a building that was destroyed, it’s not violence”.
Sorry, but I’ve been reading that bullshit for years over at animalrights.net.
“Yes. Sorry to say, but whether a certain act counts as terrorism depends on more than what sort of building was targeted and what sort of weapon was used to do it.”
It’s an act of terrorism. What building was targeted doesn’t suddenly make it less terrorism.
“Nope, I just don’t think that the word “terrorism” means “any act meant to terrorize”. As I’ve already said, it depends on whether the group targeted is participating in the activities of the group meant to be terrorized.”
The intent of the firebombing was to send a message not just the actual victims but anyone else whose job entails using animals for research. The message being, “If you think this is scary, if you don’t stop, we’ll scale up our attacks. And that goes for anyone else who tortures animals for medical benefit”.
“He was completely unapologetic– and ought to be arrested for complacency at the very least….
…what is more drastic than destroying someone’s home?
Killing them outright?
The man is evil.”
I say let Vlasak speak as often and as prominently as possible. Aside from the idea that free speech must be defended–even for those as vile as Jerry Vlasak–it gives him all the rope he needs to hang himself with.
By all means, let him talk. He’ll destroy the animal rights movement without any of us having to do it for him.
“People don’t really do things to animals that they don’t do to other people, either.”
Sez you. People have and continue to treat their fellow humans as nothing more than animals. You’d like to pretend that we’re this enlightened that everyone treats everyone else as they’d like to be treated, but it just ain’t so.
“The root enemy is an ethic of oppression that says it’s okay to define certain classes of beings (women, people of color, people of other cultures or religions, children, disabled people, other species) as arbitrarily lower than you are, and then give yourself a license to exploit or oppress them based on that designation.”
Unless of course, you’re Peter Singer, who thinks the mentally retarded are equal to animals [a completely repugnant point-of-view that devalues humanity and makes their ethical treatment a purely situational proposition rather than one based upon being a person at all], and that disabled babies can be euthanised by their parents, as if being disabled at birth makes you less valuable an individual.
And let’s not get into his views on bestiality, which will only make the zoophiles happy.
“Witness Jews being called “rats” in Nazi Germany, and Tutsi being called “cockroaches” in Rwanda.”
Being called rats or cockroaches did not suddenly make them less human. The Jews and the Tutsi are still human beings, regardless of attitudes against them.
“The ultimate solution is an ethic of universal compassion. Although that may seem utopian, we’re getting there. The animal rights movement, for instance, has made phenomenal progress in a short time. So has nonviolent Buddhism.”
Uh-huh. Sure it has. Despite animal rights having existed as a notion for the last thirty-plus years [or one hundred-plus, depending on how you define it and thus its origins], we still own animals, we still eat animals, we still wear animals, we still use animals in research, etc, etc, etc.
What exactly has been gained by the AR movement?
“Sorry, what is irrational about the cause for animal-rights?”
The fact that it is utterly illogical and incapable of being followed in the reality the way it is in the theoretical?
Case in point: Brian O’Connor’s comments RE spaying and neutering of animals and the euthanising of animals. If it’s wrong to do it to a human [spay/neuter or euthanasia], then it should be equally wrong to do it to an animal. Yet the animal rights activists can’t see the inconsistency here.
“A Syrian hamster and a man with MS in a burning building. You can save only one. Which do you save? State your reasons and come back to me on how arbitrary the distinction between human beings and animals in terms of worth is.”
Human. Next question.
“Colugo – that “plants have feelings, too” shtick is way old. if you’re going to ridicule, at least try to be original (and meaningful, btw).”
The fact that plants respond to their environment [including giving other plants a warning that there’s danger in the form of plant-eating predators] makes them “sentient” in my book, as my definiton of the word means “capable of perceiving the world via sensorial stimulation”, and that’s exactly what the plants are doing.
“And, in regard to somebody’s example of whether to save a hamster or a human with MS from a burning building, may I propose the counter-example of a chimpanzee vs. a brain-dead human (or, hell, a tray of frozen embryos, while we’re at it)? I dunno about you, but I’d save the chimp every time.”
Wow. I sure hope you don’t work for any first response team, with that kind of attitude.
“Everything that made the human being an actual person with interests is gone, and the embryos don’t actually have any interests yet, whereas the chimp is still a thinking, feeling creature. It’s not the species that makes a difference, it’s the presence of a mind and a capacity for suffering.”
But it doesn’t have a mind that equals a human. It may be clever, but it’s still a chimp and still unable to truly think in a rational, moralistic sense, the way a human can.
Can I reason with a chimp? No, I can’t. Can I reason with you? It’s not an unreasonable expectation to say I can.
“All of the justifications people here are using for the oppression of animals (including “they’re not human”) were once also used to justify the oppression of humans.”
But that oppression of humans and equating them to animals did not change the fact that they were and are human beings.
“I don’t really see any reason other than basic chauvinism to intrinsically value human lives over non-human lives, just because of species.”
I value my own kind over an animal on the grounds that humans are a truly unique species in the history of life on Earth.
No other animal can possibly come close to matching the human mind.
Just one example out of many.
It’s not chauvinism to say we’re superior.
“A decision to eat meat needs more justification than a decision to eat soy because these days the vast majority of American meat production is based on fairly hideous cruelty to animals.”
But the soy that killed countless animals from till to plate does not require justification?
No. Really. Animals die to provide you with plant foods. And it’s not all “unintentionally so”, either, when you consider that animals are poisoned to protect stored grain from vermin, as just one example.
“So when we eat a hamburger or a chicken sandwich or a plate of bacon, the animal that meat came from probably had a life where it was confined in a space so small it could barely move, possibly deliberately mutilated to prevent it from developing nervous behaviors as a result of stress, and fed food not really appropriate to its digestive system, among other things.”
Baby cows don’t have the ability to process grass and other cellulose-based foods until several weeks after birth. Milk is a completely appropriate food for its digestive system at that age.
“On the other hand when a lion eats a zebra out on the African savannah, the zebra has spent its life in the environment it evolved to occupy. Maybe it’s not a perfectly happy or safe life, but it’s a life in which the zebra has pretty much been free to do all the things zebras might be expected to enjoy doing, like eating and mating and wandering around in herds.”
And then that life ends in blood and gore and a lot of pain. Out on the savannah, there’s no anesthesia to make it painless.
“And the lion kills it as quickly as possible, because zebras are pretty badass and dangerous and no way does a lion want to draw out a fight with one.”
Quickly as possible? Taking several minutes to pull down an adult zebra is “quickly as possible”?
My bullet can drop a zebra in less than a few seconds.
Beat that, Simba.
“Not that this matters to the lions, of course. But a zebra left with its herd and in danger of being eaten by a lion nevertheless seems like it’s had its interests treated a lot more respectfully than a chow or a chicken or a pig in a modern CAFO.”
Since when does a lion treat a zebra’s interests “respectfully”? The zebra’s interests likely were “continue living and munching the grass while migrating”.
“I’m not going to say we shouldn’t eat meat at all, but I do think we should make sure we aren’t being incredibly brutal about the process of rearing the animals we intend to eat.”
That’s what the welfare laws are for.
“I believe, like most normal people, that hurting animals without a good reason is WRONG, but it is NOT because of anything intrinsic to the animal. Ethics, empathy and compassion are strictly human experiences and concepts. To say that animals have rights is to say nothing about animals whatsoever. That means that the idea doesn’t have any philosophical merit, and I have no interest in such ideas. By all means, be kind to animals. But rights? Silliness.”
Precisely.
As humans with the unique ability to think in terms of morals, we can think about the way we treat animals and strive to treat them better. We have, and we do. But we don’t give them rights, simply because no non-human species has ever clearly demonstrated an ability to think in terms of morals [which are an abstract concept, by the way].
“How many lives have been lost to the ALF/ELF?
Zero.”
That’s only if you take into account their “direct actions” which they say do not count as “violence” since it’s not done to a living being [I’ve had that argument several times with a mental midget over at AR.net]. But if you include the number of people whose lives were cut short because they died while waiting for the treatment that could’ve saved their lives or at least extended it that was halted during the R&D phase, then a lot of human lives have been lost to the ALF/ELF.
Logic: It trumps the stupidity of moral degenerates.
“Thus, animal rights is simply saying:
Were going to make it illegal to abuse animals.”
It’s already illegal. Genius…
All species capable of understanding and respecting the rights of others, have rights. All species not capable of understanding and respecting the rights of others, don’t.
Class dismissed.
Disclaimer: nothing in this comment implies that “rights” exist objectively, that non-human animals should be granted the same rights as humans, or that the violence the post is about is justified.
so just to clarify then, you really have no problem with eating meat, so long as the animals are raised in an environment that allows them “freedom to express their natures”.
what if that freedom comes at a large environmental cost?
If it’s cowburger it’s just as likely to have come from free-ranging cattle ranches down in Argentina. Do you know how much environmental damage free range beef production has caused over the last 100 years, especially in this country? – Ichthyic
Then that’s an excellent argument against free range beef production on the current scale, but no argument whatever in favour of factory farming.
Ichthyic, reading through this thread, you really have used some piss-poor arguments, like the above, your apparent support for the claim that eating soy requires as much justification as eating meat, and the old “What about lions eating zebras?” bilge. (Hint: responsibilities cannot exist without the capacity to discharge them. It is quite routine for living entities to be granted rights without being required to discharge responsibilities – think babies, the severely learning-disabled, the demented.) I think we got your real motivation in the following:
“I sure as hell don’t want some complete ignorant fuck telling me how I can and can’t do my research, so long as I am not violating any public or private property rights.”
Too. Bloody. Bad. The justification for such requirements is to prevent the infliction of unnecessary suffering.
Anne Nonymous – you deserve a Molly.
“All species capable of understanding and respecting the rights of others, have rights. All species not capable of understanding and respecting the rights of others, don’t.” – C. M. Baxter
Well, that rules humans out.
Peter Singer doesn’t think “the mentally retarded are equal to animals”. He thinks we are all animals, and that you need to treat each individual creature according to its capacity for having interests. It’s a rare mentally retarded human with capacities so diminished as to have less in the way of interests even than a chimpanzee. And of course one also has to take into account the interests of the human’s family, and the interest of other humans in not having their capacities and interests too casually dismissed, so it’s important to leave a hell of a lot of room for the benefit of the doubt. But why shouldn’t a parent be able to euthanize an anencephalic baby, or one of those “pillow angel” kids that will literally never develop out of mental infancy? Why should anybody saddled with months or a lifetime of expensive medical treatment and burdensome care to preserve the life of something which has essentially no capacity for benefiting from it?
Ugh, I’d say the same thing about you. You’d seriously save a brainless body over a chimp just because the body is human-shaped and the chimp isn’t? That seems to me like the height of inhumanity.
Every species is “unique”. Cats are unique. Bonobos are unique. E. Coli are unique. The smallpox virus (okay, not technically a species) is unique. Uniqueness as a criterion has only slight relevance here. Some unique things, like the smallpox virus, I’ll be happy to see wiped from the face of the planet. (Smallpox has no capacity for having interests and it hurts a lot of people.) Other unique things maybe have interests worth defending which ought to be recognized instead of casually dismissed because they’re not us.
Yes, our minds are different from the minds of other animals. But research has repeatedly shown that these are differences primarily of degree, and not of type. Not one of the abilities that’s been pointed up as “uniquely” human, as the thing that distinguishes us from other animals has maintained this status in the long run. Other animals use tools, have something like language, have the capacity for empathy and compassion, and develop social ethics. All we’ve got is more of it. Certainly, that “more” is unique to us (and possibly some of our now-extinct ancestors and related species), but it’s not so unique as to give us license to dismiss the interests of other species.
Yes. So? It’s essentially impossible to live in a modern industrialized society without some harm being done to animals (and other humans) on one’s behalf. The goal of adopting a vegetarian lifestyle is to minimize that, and it does cause less harm to just eat the grains directly, because cattle and chickens and pigs are fed on grain too, and you need a lot more grain per unit calorie of animal meat than you would need if you just ate the grain yourself. So, sorry, meat-eating is still the more harmful choice. This does not mean that abuses that happen during other types of food production (or other production) should not be addressed as well. There’s also the question of whether a quick kill with poison (assuming it is quick, which perhaps it isn’t) is an abuse on the same scale as a lifetime of misery.
What the hell are you babbling about? I was referring to the corn-based diet that most CAFO animals get, which upsets their digestion and is part of the reason we need to stuff them with antibiotics. Is this supposed to be some kind of defense of veal production or what?
It’s as quickly as the lions can possibly do it anyway. But, as I said before, the question here isn’t about what the lions “should” do, because lions don’t, as far as we know, have a capacity for empathizing with the zebra and thus can’t be expected to contemplate whether or not it’s okay to kill and eat it like they do. Instead it’s a question about what we should do for zebras given that lions exist, and the answer is not, “Breed them on a mass scale in CAFOs and pretend that it’s nicer because at the end of their miserable lives when we kill them we can do it quicker.”
If you want to argue that free-range zebra farming and a quick kill at the end is more ethical (in regard to the zebras, at least) than leaving them for the lions to eat, I wouldn’t disagree. But of course this “solution” neglects the interests of the lions, and if we take those interests into account too, we really have to leave them some zebras to eat. There are also other possibilities here too, including euthanizing all lions and/or all zebras in the world, but that rather falls afoul of what may be argued is their broader interest in species survivial, not to mention the interest of us and everything else on the planet in maintaining biodiversity and protecting the integrity of all the various food chains. (This is not an interest I’d expect other species to be able to recognize consciously, but I do expect that we’ll all suffer if it’s not defended.)
No shit, Sherlock. My point is, our current welfare laws aren’t preventing a lot of nastiness that ought to be prevented, so we need to make better ones, and this interests-based calculus might be a good way to go about it.
Ugh. Evidence right here of how hard it is to eliminate human chauvinism from one’s casual discourse when one has been indoctrinated in it from birth. This of course should read, “to animals (including humans)”.
I guess he’d call that a feature, not a bug. I think a better argument against his view is that if, say, great apes were really considered to be equal to small children or retarded humans and have exactly the same rights, we should remove every single ape from the wild and put them in homes.
PS. Thanks to miko and Anne Nonymous for thoughtful comments.
“I value my own kind over an animal on the grounds that humans are a truly unique species in the history of life on Earth.” JMW #236
The use of the phrase “unique species” reveals what kind of low grade thinking is used in JMW’s argument. The word ‘unique’ is better left in a high schoool term paper. Perhaps JMW might benefit from expanding his/her vocabulary. Just because one finds something “unique” does not mean it is superior. In fact, one can refer to every species as being ‘unique’, based on individual attributes not found in another species.
“But it doesn’t have a mind that equals a human. It may be clever, but it’s still a chimp and still unable to truly think in a rational, moralistic sense, the way a human can.”JMW
“Moralistic sense” – plenty of humans do not have “morals”, hence institutions like the church and government in the West. Whatever this ‘moralistic sense’ is that you speak of, does it include every culture of every human being throughout the brief history of humans? The Aztecs who offered
human sacrifices to theirs gods, or the Romans who fed Christians to the lions (yum!!!), or the practice of cannibalism in certain tribes – did they have a ‘moralisitc sense’ that is unique only to the human species?
Windy has a good point here. A chimpanzee may have not only a different level of interests than a mentally retarded human, but also different types of interests. Getting the exact same type of treatment as a mentally retarded human would be harmful to a chimp, not helpful. Which is why each individual’s and species’ interests have to be actually investigated and recognized individually instead of just making careless generalizations.
Another point in regard to Peter Singer’s discussion of infanticide is that one might argue that killing a physically disabled infant (or even a physically “normal” infant) is considerably different from killing a physically disabled child or a physically disabled adult. Even the smartest infant in the world still has a fairly minimal set of interests, and it might not be unreasonable at even at that stage to let the parents decide whether they want to take on the responsibility of raising a child, particularly if that child is going to present a much greater than normal challenge to raise.
I would still tend to come down on the side of not permitting infanticide in all but the most extreme cases (where the infant is unlikely to live for more than a few painful years, or where the infant is never going to develop mentally beyond infancy), because in all other cases there are alternatives, like adoption, which protect both the infant’s interest in life and the parents’ interest in not being burdened with an unwanted child. Of course, pre-birth, there are no alternatives to abortion which protect the woman’s interest in not being forced to undergo the suffering and risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, and so I see no problem with killing a fetus before this stage.
@Anne Nonymous
I’m still not exactly sure what you mean by interests. It sounds like you’re saying that interests can only exist if the beneficiary of those interests can conceptualize them. Is that what you mean?
Back at #193, Sam wrote: “However, the similarities you mention are not the core of my concern. I am interested in the conscious context of the pain, in the qualia, which based upon observation of mice, I very much doubt is anything remotely similar, if existent, to human experience.”
What observations of mice do you have in mind when you say that? I wouldn’t know what your qualia are, let alone those of mice; but I can make a deduction from your behavior. When an animal with whom I share a common ancestor exhibits behavior identical to mine when I am in pain, the most parsimonious explanation is that the animal is in pain. To think otherwise is “effectively imagination.” You certainly have offered no evidence for thinking otherwise.
Again, the onus of objective evidence is on you. And people who, for “their own self-interest,” are going to imagine that other animals are so different from themselves as to not be experiencing pain even when they act like it, are not going to be convinced by any evidence whatsoever.
I’m not arguing against using animals in medical research, if it is truly necessary, but rather that we be honest about the cost to the animals used.
Early human embryos are irrelevant. As Richard Dawkins has pointed out, the fly you swat suffers more than an embryo because the embryo has no nervous system to speak of. As the embryo becomes a fetus and increasingly viable, the picture changes, of course (as, not surprisingly, does its legal status under Roe v. Wade).
“”I value my own kind over an animal on the grounds that humans are a truly unique species in the history of life on Earth.” JMW #236
The use of the phrase “unique species” reveals what kind of low grade thinking is used in JMW’s argument. The word ‘unique’ is better left in a high schoool term paper. Perhaps JMW might benefit from expanding his/her vocabulary. Just because one finds something “unique” does not mean it is superior. In fact, one can refer to every species as being ‘unique’, based on individual attributes not found in another species.”
But our reasoning capacities ARE unique amongst all of life.
No other organism can engage me with reason, or logic, or any other kind of abstract thought. I can discuss philosophy with you. I can discuss morality with you. If you’re feeling angry I can communicate with you and hopefully convince you to see reason.
I can’t do that with an animal. If I were being attacked by, say, a cougar, I can’t very well use reason to stop it. Only a show of force would convince it to turn tail.
Reason. Logic. Abstract thinking.
That makes us humans unique as far as life on Earth goes.
[You can show me another species that’s capable, but I doubt it. And no, “signing” apes and talking parrots won’t cut it.]
“”But it doesn’t have a mind that equals a human. It may be clever, but it’s still a chimp and still unable to truly think in a rational, moralistic sense, the way a human can.”JMW
“Moralistic sense” – plenty of humans do not have “morals”, hence institutions like the church and government in the West.”
Just because you disagree with their definition of “morals” doesn’t in and of itself make their “morals” immoral.
“Thou shalt not kill” is a moral statement atheists have adopted, despite the fact we see it as a Christian commandment.
You going to tell me that “Thou shalt not kill” is immoral because it’s a Christian commandment?
“Whatever this ‘moralistic sense’ is that you speak of, does it include every culture of every human being throughout the brief history of humans?”
It does, regardless of what we today deem to be “moral” or “immoral” [we should know by now that what was morally-acceptable even only a decade or two ago isn’t what’s seen as morally acceptable today].
The only thing absolute about human morality is that it takes a human to agree/disagree with what is/is not “moral”. No non-human animal is engaging us in this discussion over morality.
Unless you’re really a chimp?
“The Aztecs who offered human sacrifices to theirs gods, or the Romans who fed Christians to the lions (yum!!!), or the practice of cannibalism in certain tribes – did they have a ‘moralistic sense’ that is unique only to the human species?”
Short answer? Yes, they did. They thought that what they did in the name of their gods was good and moral–the thing Good and Just People did; that to do otherwise would incur the wrath of their gods.
Today we say that what they did was wrong and immoral. Rightly so.
That doesn’t change what the attitudes towards these ideas were back then. We’ve just developed a clearer view of the world since those days, and see human sacrifice or the feeding of people with a belief system we disagree with to half-starved wild animals as [rightly] unconscionable.
Also, declaring an act to be moral or immoral requires a mind that can think in those terms [even despicable pieces of human waste like the ALF and Jerry Vlasak and their twisted views on “right” and “wrong” have a moral sense–albeit utterly distorted [especially when it comes to what’s legal/illegal] beyond all recognition].
Animals simply cannot think like this. Only humans can.
JMW, members of some other social species do show signs of a “moral sense”, which is simply a notion of what’s acceptable behavior for members of a society, combined with willingness to ostracize or punish those who violate those standards, and a capacity to recognize their own violations of standards. Primate species are particularly notable for this, but even pet dogs know when they’ve violated the norms established by their human “pack”.
In addition, many species, particularly dolphins and primates, have demonstrated capacity for abstract reasoning. Hell, scientists have even managed to get cats to learn how to get food by doing a complex “dance” involving standing on a series of plates in the proper order. If you’re not willing to call that abstract reasoning (what the hell does standing on plates have to do with getting food for a normal animal?), then it seems like you’ve essentially defined abstract reasoning as “something that can only be performed by humans”, making it pointless to argue with you.
The difference between humans and other animals, as I’ve said about five million times now, is not that “we” have something “they” don’t. It’s just that we are an especially extreme variation on socialization and tool use, which means we tend to do some things (like having arguments about ethics) that other species don’t. (And, hell, there are plenty of humans whose capacity for abstract discussion about ethics is pretty limited or non-existent, and I’m not about to count them as being unworthy of consideration because of that.)
————
Jams, I wouldn’t exactly say that interests don’t exist if the beneficiary can’t conceptualize them, but rather that the intensity of the interest may be modulated by the beneficiary’s capacity to conceptualize it.
Fear of death is an easy place to see this. As far as we can tell, most non-human animals fear death only in a fairly concrete fashion — when faced with a direct, immediate threat to their lives they will struggle to escape the threat. There’s no evidence (but then again, I’m not certain how we would gather such evidence) that they’re concerned in a more general sense about the inevitability of their own mortality, to the degree of obsessing about it in the way that humans sometimes do. The degree to which creatures are capable of fearing death is also affected by their ability to recognize a particular mode of death — a cat doesn’t recognize a euthanasia needle, a cow may not recognize a bolt-stunner (depending on whether it can see what the thing does to other cows) — as well as their ability to be affected by awareness of the deaths of other creatures. (For example, humans might be made to suffer not only by an immediate threat to their own lives, but also by being frightened by news of threats against other humans. Creatures lacking language and long-range communication might only be frightened and caused to suffer by directly seeing another of their kind harmed. Dolphins, elephants, and primates might have the capacity for some intermediate level of information transfer amongst themselves about threats to their communities.)
So the idea is that the appropriate ethical weight for a particular interest is somewhat dependent on the degree to which having that interest denied subjects the creature in question to suffering. There are probably a lot of complexities and subtleties here, and I’m not going to pretend that this provides a cut and dried answer to every ethical question, but I think it’s a helpful stance from which to approach these kind of issues.
Reading JMW’s argument again, I note that his/her concept of “reasoning” seems to mean having the capacity to be communicated and negotiated with by a human. The problem with the cougar example, of course, is that a cougar and a human share no common language beyond body posturing. (And cougars probably don’t actually have much in the way of symbolic language capacity, unlike primates, parrots, elephants, dolphins, and etc.) Cougars are also fairly solitary creatures, and so one would not expect their capacity for social negotiation to be especially great, particularly not in regard to creatures which, from their perspective, are prey rather than peers. So it’s not entirely surprising that the only possible channel for a human to negotiate with an attacking cougar might be to impress upon it one’s willingness and capacity to defend oneself from attack. (The big solitary cats can actually negotiate with each other to some degree — it seems that they do manage to assemble territory-sharing arrangements under some circumstances, which mostly involve the sharers staying as far out of each other’s way as possible, as determined by checking urine and other markings.)
In any case, many other non-human species are not as solitary as cougars and are much more capable of intraspecific bargaining and negotiation. One case is the example of bonobos trading sex for food or using it to patch up disagreements or any number of other things. Similar capacities have cropped up in interspecific contexts in human interactions with gorillas. And, hell, even pet cats and dogs will “beg”, perform tricks, or engage in other behaviors clearly intended to elicit a favorable response from their humans, in the form of food or approval.
Granted, these communication mechanisms tend to be cruder than what might be accomplished with the use of language, but I challenge you to do much better if you were amongst humans with whom you shared no common language. Would they be justified in treating you as you would treat non-human animals simply because they could not “reason” with you, as you define it?
Jams, I realized I missed an earlier comment of yours as well on the concept of interests, so sorry for that.
I think I’d argue that even in terms of humans, we do tend to see rights wax and wane as a function of intellectual capacity. For example, mental disability which renders a person incompetent to vote is one of the few things (other than status as a felon) which can still legitimately be used to deny someone the right to vote (or presumably hold office). There are plenty of illegitimate denials these days too, like being a member of some easily abused group that’s likely to vote Democratic, but those are sort of aside from the point here.
Persons with mental illness or retardation, or who are temporarily under the influence of drugs may also lose all or part of their right to freedom of movement (permanently or temporarily), for their own safety or the safety of others. (And note that the person who’s high on PCP will get their rights back once their mental functioning returns to normal, modulo any legal action in regard to the PCP use.) Or, in a more subtle example, someone who’s just plain not very bright may not be able to win access to the benefits associated with having an advanced academic degree simply because of their inability to attain that degree.
The problem is that we don’t apply this ethos very consistently across species. All humans get a free pass on certain things simply by virtue of being human, and non-humans are not defended to the same degree as a human with comparable capacities might be simply because they are not human.
you’re being willfully obtuse. because it’s being done wrong doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
willfully obtuse?
bullshit.
you yourself admitted in that very post that you get ignorant requests from people on these boards all the time.
the question is NOT whether there should be animal oversight committees, but WHO should be making the decisions on them.
I’m sorry, but it’s yourself that seems to be missing the point, even while you write it down in your own post!
IMO, it’s give an inch and they’ll take a mile territory, and frankly, if you really think that these people are capable of making good decisions about animal research, you might not want to be telling us about all the ignorant crap they spew.
It’s simply not our job, nor should it be our responsibility, to teach people on these boards every how and why of how animal research is done, and why.
they should be learning this for themselves by taking classes, just like we did, so they would be qualified to make reasoned (and reasonable) decisions.
if you are experienced with animal use boards, you surely know the history of how different groups of animals have been added to the animal use protocols, yes?
do you recall what their justifications for adding the new groups of animals were?
boy, I sure do, and it isn’t a pretty recollection of applied logic and evidence-based reasoning.
In response to Michael Glenn:
I wouldn’t know what your qualia are, let alone those of mice.
Well you can ask me to verbally describe them, this is the traditional approach in understanding another person’s perception. Sure I may respond to a correlated motion patch correctly, but what motion did I see, what did I have conscious access to?
When an animal with whom I share a common ancestor exhibits behavior identical to mine when I am in pain, the most parsimonious explanation is that the animal is in pain.
I can assure you that your response to pain is not the same as a mouse. There may be similarities to some aspects, especially the more reflexive ones, or the creation of long-term memory, but we humans have the capability to reflect on pain, to really place it in a context where it affects our identity. I see no evidence that a mouse even has identity. I see no evidence that the mouse reflects upon its situation in life. These are the sort of things I care about and empathize with, these are the sort of things I would require evidence of. What is pain if it is not inflicted on an identity? To be sure a mouse does have rudimentary identity, it does have topographic representations of its body, but I am thinking several associations beyond just topographic representation.
To think otherwise is “effectively imagination.”
No, to think otherwise is actually the absence of imagination. To make it explicitly clear, all empathy is imagination. That does not mean empathy lacks in value or utility, simply that it is imagination, the creation of circumstances from your own mind, that may or may not be true.
You certainly have offered no evidence for thinking otherwise.
Take the history of the study of action versus perception. There are tools for measuring action and tools (largely requiring verbal descriptions) for measuring perception, and even us humans can often act without perceiving. Even we can be damaged, and respond to pain, without perceiving the pain in a psychologically harmful way. Yet you expect me to take it for granted that a mouse does.
What a stupid argument. Can you beat your own dog to a pulp on a whim?
you’re entirely missing the point, which is really about the issue of law and the application of the concept of rights.
If you are interested in passing actual LAWS to protect animals, they simply can’t be based on subjective reasoning (like we need to protect baby seals from being clubbed because they are cute, for example).
Have you ever actually read the Endangered Species Act, for example?
look at the reasoning used to construct how legal actions can be taken to protect a given species.
it really does need to be based on sound reasoning that is applicable across a wide variety of circumstances.
It’s the very danger represented by anthropomorphic argumentation of “animal rights” that makes it such a poor basis for deciding legislation, and the more it is employed, the more it will end up backfiring.
I deliberately chose the extreme viewpoint to try and make this clear, but I apparently failed. Hopefully somebody else will present the argument in a different way, and it will become clearer then.
I realize some here apparently haven’t the slightest clue of the dangers involved in using subjectivity in deciding which laws should be passed, but there’s really little I can add, other than suggesting those interested actually spend time perusing pertinent legislation like the ESA I already suggested.
Moreover, I’ve already previously made it explicitly clear I fully support the concept of animal welfare (both pragmatically – and I even gave examples – as well as personally), but seriously, extending the concept of rights simply doesn’t make logical or legal sense.
Evidence right here of how hard it is to eliminate human chauvinism from one’s casual discourse when one has been indoctrinated in it from birth. This of course should read, “to animals (including humans)”.
funny, earlier I was pointing out how hard it is to eliminate anthropomorphism.
Interesting, Sam. You and JMW both seem to define the critical feature here as the ability of a human to recount, in language you understand, his or her interior experience, in order for you to be willing to believe that interior experience exists. If you met a human who did not speak your language would you thereby be unwilling to conclude they had no interior experience? What if you met a “feral” human, who had not learned any language at all? What about humans with mental retardation which prevents them from developing significant language skills? Hell, what about children who have not yet learned to express themselves very well? What about these humans, in your mind, would set them “above” animals in terms of possessing interests worthy of defense? Because it seems that you think they do have such interests. What would be your evidentiary basis for this belief? Would you rely on non-verbal cues and genetic similarity? And if so, why would non-verbal cues and genetic similarity be an illegitimate criterion for recognition of the interests of non-humans?
I would suggest that your willingness to dismiss these interests is indeed, as you say, an absence of imagination. Or, more accurately, a failure of imagination. Because you are incapable of imagining how something as visually different from us as a mouse might have some similarities of experience which are worthy of our consideration, you refuse to acknowledge the possibility. It’s not clear to me how this is much different from creationists being unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that all the different species could have evolved simply because they cannot imagine the timescales on which this evolution occurred.
Because you are incapable of imagining how something as visually different from us as a mouse might have some similarities of experience which are worthy of our consideration, you refuse to acknowledge the possibility.
and you apparently are equally unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that you are over-anthropomorphizing.
Yes, Ichthyic, I think children’s films about anthropomorphic mice are true stories. Ratatouille was so realistic!
What kind of idiot do you take me for? All I’m saying is that recent evidence suggests that other animals deserve (to varying degrees) significantly more credit than we’ve been giving them. Maybe not the same amount of credit, or the same type of credit as the average human, but certainly more than many posters on this thread seem to think. Even as a non-expert, I’ve been amazed by the amount of apparent ignorance here about recent discoveries in regard to social species, discoveries it’s hard to avoid hearing about if one is paying even the least bit of attention to science news.
It almost seems like there’s some kind of religious commitment to the idea of humans uber alles that’s immune to any kind of evidentiary disturbance. People seem so eager to find an excuse to disregard other species that they’ll latch on to the most transparently false claims of intrinsic difference just so they don’t have to face the complex challenges that arise from consideration of these creatures’ interests. Because, make no mistake, consideration of other species’ interests would indeed require dramatic changes in how we live our lives and would throw quite a number of things into turmoil. It’s much easier just to say, “Their interests don’t count, and besides we’re taking care of them just fine,” than to actually try to make changes.
Yes, Ichthyic, I think children’s films about anthropomorphic mice are true stories. Ratatouille was so realistic!
completely and totally irrelevant.
nice playing with you.
Although I guess technically Ratatouille was about a, you know, rat, not a mouse. I guess I should have cited The Great Mouse Detective or Fievel. Oh well.
If you want relevance, Ichthyic, why don’t you try answering a single one of the points I made in any of my last several posts? Do you have anything to say whatsoever about the evidence in re social species and why it doesn’t give us an obligation to recognize these creatures’ interests? Do you have anything to say about why we should recognize the interests of humans with whom we cannot communicate verbally but not those of non-human animals which show considerable capacity for experiences similar to ours but with which we cannot communicate verbally?
The Endangered Species Act is essentially about protecting other species for our own benefit. As far as I can see, it says little or nothing about whether or not those species might have interests of their own which we have some obligation to recognize. Perhaps it’s more practical to write our laws in this self-centered fashion, as people are more likely to be willing to sign on to such laws, but the question here is not what is practical but what is right. So your citation of the ESA is meaningless here. Speaking of irrelevant things.
In any case, perhaps you’ve had to deal with inappropriate levels of anthropomorphization interfering with your research, and you have my sympathy for that. But the fact that some people take the argument for non-human interests in absurd, non-evidence-based directions does not mean that there is no argument for better protections of those interests than certain of our laws currently provide. It seems that because of your (perhaps legitimate) frustration with over-regulation in one realm you are letting yourself be blinded to the rather hideous consequences of under-regulation in other realms. If you are unwilling to even consider this possibility, then I think you are indeed correct in your implication that further discussion is pointless. Sorry to have things end this way.
Holy flying cracker…
#260, how in the FSM did bombing a researcher’s home bring any kind of attention to the areas of animal rights that need it, like certain farming practices–the place where the most horrific abuses occur? Me, I find it awfully telling that these activists went after scientists, not a really good target like Larry Pope, the big kahuna at Smithfield Foods. It’s easy to pick on a scientist, who probably lives in an ordinary home in an ordinary neighborhood, not a mansion behind a gate with security guards, huh?
This little tantrum was not only malicious and ugly, but cowardly and petty. This sends a message to me that reinforces a suspicion that animal rights activists care more about animals than people. Unfortunately enough of the breed give off more than a whiff of that. Let’s say it comes across as an overwhelming stench.
BTW, even a non-scientist like me is well aware of recent developments in animal cognition research. Guess who was learning all that stuff? I doubt that it was PETA or ALF, and I’d wager a hell of a lot of money that it was people like Ichthyic. You know, I’d actually have some respect for animal rights “activists” if they would try becoming scientists and teaching us about the wonders of the animals they love so dearly, discover things about them that make us feel more of a kinship with them, rather than browbeating us with their sanctimony.
But so few of them do this that it’s not even funny.
I won’t even go into how no animal rights zealot ever truly addresses why it’s right to protect animals but not plants, why it’s okay to commit violence against plants but not charismatic animals, why it’s okay to eat plants but not animals. You blew it off as a “tired” or maybe even a bogus argument, but the decline of plant life on this planet is, ultimately, more deleterious to our survival than whether or not someone eats a domesticated chicken (which wouldn’t have such an abundant presence on this planet were it not for us).
There has to be a balance between the interests of all species on this planet. I just don’t think PETA and ALF are the ones genuinely looking for it.
Holy flying cracker, Aquaria. Read back in the thread and take a look at who was one of the first posters to describe the bombers as terrorists, and then to defend that description against some who wanted to dismiss the terroristic nature of their actions. And while you’re at it, go back and read the argument I very specifically made as to why some non-human animals might have interests worthy of defense which other non-human animals and non-animal species might not have. And maybe I didn’t make it as explicit as I could have, but you might also note my comments in passing about protecting the integrity of various food chains and turning to vegetarianism as a more environmentally sound alternative than meat-eating. I left the environmental issues otherwise unexplored because it seemed like they weren’t really what was at stake here.
If you want to holy flying cracker somebody about not having awareness of or addressing your issues, you picked the wrong target.
Also, it shouldn’t fucking need saying, but apparently it does. I think PETA and ALF are a bunch of goddamn whackjobs who do more harm than good to the cause they ostensibly are promoting, and who don’t even have a very clear notion of what a sensible cause is in this regard. I also think condemnation of these crazies is an easy way to avoid addressing more substantive arguments on this subject. If you want to address any of my actual points, you know, feel free. I’m waiting.
I won’t even go into how no animal rights zealot ever truly addresses why it’s right to protect animals but not plants, why it’s okay to commit violence against plants but not charismatic animals, why it’s okay to eat plants but not animals. You blew it off as a “tired” or maybe even a bogus argument, but the decline of plant life on this planet is, ultimately, more deleterious to our survival than whether or not someone eats a domesticated chicken (which wouldn’t have such an abundant presence on this planet were it not for us). – Aquaria
Really, what a load of tosh. You are conflating (as Ichthyic did less explicitly) the protection of endangered species – where indeed there is no relevant distinction between plants and animals – with the welfare of individual organisms, where there is – so far as members of many animal species are concerned: those that are capable of suffering and enjoyment, and so have individual interests. This is in fact a common theme for those that defend the cruelties of current farming practice (which as has been said, far outweigh those of scientific experimentation). Why the hell should individual chickens be held to benefit from the fact that factory farming means there are more members of its species than there would otherwise be?
Actually, I should dial back my language on PETA somewhat. They do a lot of whackjobby things and are rather careless with their thinking on a lot of issues, but they do also do some good things on occasion. Hell, even ALF has done some decent non-violent direct action although that seems to be more past than present. (Each group has had occasions where it managed to reveal some pretty nasty animal abuses and caused those abuses to be shut down.) I don’t support either group as a whole, but once in a while they’ll do something sorta respectable, and I ought to give them credit for that.
Anne,
Interesting, Sam. You and JMW both seem to define the critical feature here as the ability of a human to recount, in language you understand, his or her interior experience, in order for you to be willing to believe that interior experience exists.
Not really, it is the underlying experiences that the communication reveals. Once I have established this for many humans, it seems reasonable to apply the rule to most or all–I would require rather special reasons not to feel empathy–like clear knowledge that they are brain dead.
What about these humans, in your mind, would set them “above” animals in terms of possessing interests worthy of defense? Because it seems that you think they do have such interests.
It is not about their interests, it is only about the empathy and compassion I feel.
And if so, why would non-verbal cues and genetic similarity be an illegitimate criterion for recognition of the interests of non-humans?
Genetic similarity seems largely irrelevant, cultured human cancer cells are indistinguishable, genetically, from humans. Non-verbal behavior is important. For example, great apes appear to show much stronger identities than a mouse, and I have observed them appearing to think about themselves. Its just behavior, but it does not appear reflexive. Its compelling enough that I do empathize.
I would suggest that your willingness to dismiss these interests is indeed, as you say, an absence of imagination. Or, more accurately, a failure of imagination. Because you are incapable of imagining how something as visually different from us as a mouse might have some similarities of experience which are worthy of our consideration, you refuse to acknowledge the possibility.
I acknowledge the possibility, it is just not a particularly compelling one. You call it a failure of imagination, but I can imagine it. Its just that imagination is tempered by skepticism.
It’s not clear to me how this is much different from creationists being unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that all the different species could have evolved simply because they cannot imagine the timescales on which this evolution occurred.
I can’t grasp the timescales involved, really. I just accept the rather solid evidence. Provide me with solid evidence that a mouse experiences anything remotely similar to what I experience, and I will acknowledge the fact. Simple behaviors are not convincing, a hurt ant has similarities in mammalian response to pain, but that certainly does not demonstrate that the ant experiences pain remotely similarly to how I do. Humans exhibit simple behaviors without experiencing them. Reflexive behaviors and long-term memory alone are not evidence.
No, you are missing the point. Someone asked why we should protect animals from pain, and you answered “property rights of humans”, which is silly.
Of which country? Finnish law and regulations specify a monetary value for each individual of an endangered species (and most non-endangered vertebrate species), but the state is using property rights as a means to protect endangered species, not the other way around.
I mostly agree with you there (although I think the reason to reject the concept of animal rights is practical – the unsavoury movement currently attached to it – rather than logical) But that doesn’t mean that I have to accept sloppy reasoning in favor of the status quo.
Sam, fair enough then. I don’t know that you and I are necessarily at as far at odds on this as you think if your views are as described. I don’t have a definite opinion at the moment on the precise amount of personhood experienced by a mouse, but I’d certainly agree that it’s significantly less than that experienced by humans and other great apes, as well as dolphins, elephants, canines, felines, etc. I do think we should engage in some protection of welfare even with creatures where personhood does not seem to be well-defined — avoidance of cruelty and killing unless there is no alternative still seems appropriate, and we might consider giving some level of benefit of the doubt on the personhood issue to all mammalian species and birds, and many octopods, just to leave some margin of error on this.
I would argue that many if not all CAFOs, for example, are beyond the pale because they cause a great deal of suffering purely to satisfy the desires of the agribusinesses to make money and the customers to enjoy meat (not to mention that they’re actually inimical to our environmental and economic interests in a lot of ways). There is a reasonable alternative to CAFOs, and that’s a higher dietary emphasis on vegetable protein (possibly combined with an increase in small-scale organic farming, as described in The Omnivore’s Dilemma), and so I think we have a responsibility to move in this direction to end the unnecessary suffering this farming method causes.
Similarly questionable might be some of the cruelties associated with animal testing of cosmetics, the luxury fur industry, and veal production — sure some of the results of these cruelties might be enjoyable, but is the pleasure they bring really worth the cost in suffering to other creatures?
And of course, there is still some scientific research which might be considered questionable. I’m certain that the majority of scientists and review boards are fairly careful about avoiding cruelty unless the need is very pressing and there is no possible alternative, but I’ve read of a few studies that really made me question whether that balance was being kept fairly, or whether someone had their thumb on the scales in favor of the humans.
Do you disagree with this kind of argument?
Sam, the only difference I see in our perspectives is that you feel that an animal that cannot conceptualize and communicate its pain in language is unworthy of your empathy and compassion. That’s not an issue of “objective evidence,” but of personal predilection.
Anne Nonymous, your comments are a joy to read.
One incident that tells me all I need to know about PETA: Ingrid Newkirk wrote a letter to Yasser Arafat complaining about an incident where a donkey had been loaded up with explosives to kill people. She objected to killing the donkey, and didn’t say a word about killing the PEOPLE.
Fuck that crazy misanthropic bitch, and everyone who gives her money.
-jcr
Anne,
By and large I think your proposals are fine. The equation for me comes down to a comparison of benefit to beings I am relatively certain are ‘persons’ to the harm to beings I have little confidence are ‘persons’. When the gain for humans is small or none then it seems reasonable to provide a benefit of the doubt even to animals I have little confidence are ‘persons’. For such reasons I find the concept of someone hurting mice just to hurt them rather unsettling.
Michael,
I don’t care about language per se, I care about it only because it is a strong way to demonstrate the degree of thought, identity, personhood. It really sucks that there are not other comparably powerful ways to measure these things for animals–if there were I would certainly pay attention to such measurements and base my judgments just as strongly on them.
Just because 500 years ago, the only way to recreate visual scenes were through interpretations from other people that had witnessed the scene (via painting, verbal description, etc), does not mean people would have ignored evidence about visual scenes provided by photographs from modern cameras. The problem simply being that modern cameras did not exist. There are probably better analogies but this is the first comparable thing I could think of.
I’m against veal, for one reason: I don’t know what all the hoopla is about. It just doesn’t taste as good as proper red meat with fat marbled through it. It’s pale and pink and watered down tasting. Sure it’s tender but I like my meat to have some toughness. I have sharp cutting teeth in the front of my mouth for a reason, after all.
With that out of the way, I have a proposition for any PETA members out there: Save an animal, volunteer to be slaughtered for my freezer. That would make quite the protest wouldn’t it? It would serve a triple purpose too: I get my meat, you get the satisfaction of being a martyr for your cause, (albeit a willing one) and none of us have to listen to your self righteous caterwauling. Everybody wins. How about it? Drop me a line at [email protected] if you’re interested.
Note: Must provide own transportation to my slaughter facility (basement.) And you’d probably have to sign some kind of release form or something.
Sam, I think a more general version of your logic applies even in the context of interactions with other humans. For example, I’m not going to deliberately harm another human unless it seems absolutely necessary to prevent them from harming myself or someone else. I think a large part of the endeavor of social development and civilization has been attempts to reduce the number of circumstances in which one or the other party to a human/human interaction feels forced to resort to harming their opposite number.
Along the same lines, I think it’s also important to strive to reduce the number of circumstances in which humans feel it’s necessary to harm non-human animals. I don’t think anybody with any sense imagines that all deleterious human/non-human interactions could suddenly vanish overnight, any more than we can eliminate at one go all the ways humans harm each other. For example, we’ve already been through centuries of struggle on the issues of racism and gender discrimination, and we’re still nowhere near eliminating either entirely, partly because of the difficulty in changing attitudes and partly because some people derive benefit from the harms these attitudes cause.
But the two things that have brought about change in cases where humans systematically abused other humans are the same two things that can bring about reduction of systematic harm of non-humans: first, a growing recognition that there’s something there that ought to be changed, and second the creative development of technologies which make the change easier to accept. I think we need to see a reduction in our society’s reliance on harm of non-human animals as a goal to strive for, in the same way that we already recognize the importance of ceasing to rely on harming other humans. We may not find that we are willing or able to change overnight to a fully humane society, but that’s the direction we should be looking.
Right there with you Max. Never been a huge fan. Much rather have a nice marbled rib-eye.
Okay, Max. I accept that you’re a big tough carnivore who likes your meat so raw it screams and bleeds as you tear chunks out of it with your bare teeth. I don’t know why you think this fits you for entry into civilized human society, but I’m sure the lions earlier in this thread will be happy to have you join their pride. Except, even lions don’t brag about how awesome they are for being savage killers. They just kill and eat because that’s what they need to do to live.
Unless what you really mean is you like fantasizing about how tough you are while being too cowardly to face up to the truth of the cruel and ignoble process of confinement and slaughter which produces those neat little chunks of meat that end up on your plate. Does it make you feel powerful to be the beneficiary of such brutality?
Or would you perhaps like to actually make an argument of some substance here, rather than simply reveling in the way our modern industrialized society allows even a nobody like you to pretend to be a top predator?
…Well, perhaps that was a little over the top, but I really do think that kind of callous gloating is extremely distasteful, Max. Sure, PETA and ALF are mostly crazed and deserve to be denounced (particularly if they engage in terrorism), but gleefully and childishly celebrating one’s love for eating meat is an ugly thing to do when the meat comes at the cost it does these days.
As a counter to the garrulous and ludicrous posturings of the likes of you and Nick Gotts, I find it fair game.
Yeah, because I was totally defending PETA, Peter. Perhaps you would like to actually think about the issues instead of writing off the subject because you like the taste of meat and some of the opponents of meat-eating happen to be crazy people?
OK It was over the top. I figured it was so over the top everyone would know I was joking and intentionally being a douche- I have zero internet tact. I always forget to make it obvious I’m intentionally being an ass. Release form or no I don’t think that’d work. Plus I hear human is too salty. and contaminated. Cannibalism causes diseases.
That being said I’ve heard enough self righteous crap about veganism and vegetarianism from PETA that I feel like at least responding in kind. I eat meat. I always will eat meat.
Now wrt #’s 275 and 276 I agree fully. My dream is to run a self-sufficient farm someday where I can attempt to raise my own meat (and yes, grudgingly, veggies too) in as cruelty-free an environment as possible.
Now as a child, I had a mostly free-range, free breeding, roaming flock of mixed chickens of assorted breeding. They clucked around and were more of pets than farm animals, but they still laid just as productively. When freeranged in such a way I noticed feed would go further too as they’d pick their diet mostly themselves.
Growing up I worked at an actual chicken farm and let me tell you it was no picnic.
The most heartbreaking example was that when it was time to clear out the barn for the next batch of chicks, having over 3000 inevitably some would escape.
These escaped birds, even simple chickens, were so head-fucked that they tried to hide from the sun and slowly starved to death in one spot in the field, surrounded by natural chicken food (grass, seeds, bugs, grit, etc) and unable to comprehend such a thing even on the level a chicken should.
I am not inured to suffering.
And unlike the PETA types (My vitriol is reserved mostly for them, and I pour it out without apology) I actually have some vague idea of how I can make it better, at least for myself and a few farm animals, when I finally have the means. Which doesn’t involve firebombing people. Or buildings.
Doesn’t unstressed (“Happy”) meat taste better anyways? I think it does. I can tell you them eggs that came from ‘happy’ chickens tasted better. But maybe it was just the extra nutrient they got from picking their own free diet.
My point is, I’m not a believer in animal cruelty or modern farming practices, for alot of reasons on top of and including animal welfare (there’s also the crushing of the small family farm, something I’ve dreamed of having since birth, and the homogenisation of breeds causing genetically similar animals in massive populations and all attendant risks, which is why my chicken flock as a kid was as mixed as I could make it)
And I intend to do something constructive about it. Something that will result in happier animals. Even if I turn around and have them slaughtered for meat. Think about it: Actual quantifiable results for at least a handful of animals, with no hoopla or violence!
After all, us ‘big tough carnivores who like our meat so raw it screams and bleeds’ don’t waste vital energy on kills we don’t really intend to eat right?
Now here’s something I will say to PETA, and ALF, and this one I WILL do: For every animal you guys don’t eat, I am going to eat three, or at least try, and encourage my friends (who are the same as me on this subject) to do the same. They’ll have no problem with that, especially if I cook it.
I may be the king of the jungle, but I’m the king of the barbecue pit too.
One more thing, since I feel the need to brag a little…. I threw together a haphazard garden that includes a large fig tree, four potato plants, an onion patch, and six garlic plants…. as well as an ornamental clematis and tiger lilly for kicks…. all in an 8X10 or thereabouts garden plot, all thriving with tons of space. Gee for a ‘big tough carnivore, I got quite the green thumb don’t I?
Holy Crap… and I JUST this second realised your ‘over the top’ comment was about yourself, not me. See, I really am stoned. Purple Kush kicks my ass every time. Ahh weed, my weakness, next to meat, it is one of my favorite things.
That’s what it comes down to with me. Weed, women, meat, coca cola, dirty jokes, that hilarious old ‘Beetlejuice’ cartoon, the outdoors, (in no particular order), I revel in my favorite things in life. Kind of like a hyena rolling in a rotten carcass. If I truly love it, why not revel in it? Especially if someone is trying to take it away from me.
I’m late to the thread…oh, well.
@ mothra: “I, not being an Ichthyologist, do not know if those fish capable of sex change are also those fish possessing modified fins forming an intermittent organ.”
Mollys do. I’m not an ichthyologist either, but I had a few mollys of various colors in my aquarium at one time. Imagine my surprise when I realized that one of my two females had a spontaneous sex change! As for the intromittent organ, in Mollys it’s a gonopodium.
“When the gain for humans is small or none then it seems reasonable to provide a benefit of the doubt even to animals I have little confidence are ‘persons’. For such reasons I find the concept of someone hurting mice just to hurt them rather unsettling.” Thanks, Sam (#271), for saying that, which was more or less my point all along. That a mouse, a fairly close relative on the evolutionary tree, screams when stabbed is sufficient objective evidence to extend just that benefit of the doubt.
As I hope I made clear in the beginning, my argument is not against using animals in medical research but for honesty about the consequences to the animal. I think it’s incumbent upon us, who have these creatures in our power, to at least make a strong case for the necessity of the research before “hurting mice” (or any other animal). And, of course, I think a stronger case is required with animals that show, for example, greater self-awareness: as great apes and possibly a few others do by passing the mirror test.
“I don’t care about language per se, I care about it only because it is a strong way to demonstrate the degree of thought, identity, personhood. It really sucks that there are not other comparably powerful ways to measure these things for animals.”
Of course it sucks. But it’s not all-or-nothing. We don’t need language to see that a mouse hurts when stabbed. But there’s nothing in that assertion to imply that pain has anything like the same kind of meaning for a mouse as it does for us.
But the fact of any kind of pain at all is sufficient to extend that benefit of the doubt.